


some sun has got to rise

by allapplesfall



Series: landslide [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Parent Death, Pike Trickfoot is a Blessing but She's a Person!!!!!!, she hurts and she copes and it's messy but she keeps going
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 01:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: Wilhand dies.If Pike were as used to being left behind as she pretends to be, this would all be a lot easier.





	some sun has got to rise

**Author's Note:**

> This is a post-campaign one fic, so spoilers for up to there! I actually started writing it after the campaign ended but it's taken me till now to finish it. Also, though this is in the same series as my other Pike fic, you don't need to have read that at all. 
> 
>  
> 
> For Nonna and Auntie Hellie.

The light shines bright around her, so bright.

She reaches out as far as she can to try and grab it, her fists closing on glacial, empty air. It should be warm, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t she feel heat erupt through her chest? The blessing of Sarenrae has always been a warm thing. A gentle thing. But that doesn’t make sense, because the beams are hitting her body now, enveloping her hands, and all she can feel is cold—

 

-

 

Pike wakes.

The night is dark around her. One of Percy’s clocks ticks on the wall, but she can’t see it well enough to tell the hour. Rumbling snores carry from where her brother sleeps, sprawled among his nest of blankets.

She sits upright and casts off her sheets. It only takes her a few strides to reach the room’s single window, and she nestles onto the narrow sill easily. She presses her cheek to the glass, bearing the chill. Her breath ghosts a fine mist as she exhales. The invisible Heaven’s Stair blocks any light from the moon, though she knows the mountain looms above, vast and immeasurable. It makes her feel small.

 _Hi, Vax_ , she thinks, surprising herself. She supposes it is that kind of night—the fog hanging low outside, the last embers of the fire dying, her heart heavy. With Scanlan away visiting Kaylie and her wife, and Grog sleeping, it’s just her, and the darkness, and the memories of lost friends.

She wonders if this is how it is for him all the time.

It’s lonely.

_Hi, Vax._

She reaches for her holy symbol, still hanging beneath her nightshirt. It’s as physically untouched by the passage of time as she is. It’s only been fifteen years—a small time for a gnome who’s no longer slaying dragons and killing gods. All the same…

It’s been fifteen _years_.

_Hi, Vax._

Gods, she thinks, if he were still with them. If he could play with his nieces and nephews, doting on them and getting them into mischief. If he could keep Vex company, so she would never again have days where she stared like she was missing half a soul. If he could love Keyleth till she forgot she was the leader of a people, making her laugh that goofy chuckle that Pike hasn’t heard in far too long. If he could rib Pike about dating Scanlan, grinning in that teasing-soft way of his as their tankards got lighter.

Gods, if he could _see_ this. If he could be here.

She misses him.

Her knuckles are white against her pendant. She refuses to acknowledge the burning behind her eyes.

Fuck, Pike is _furious_. There was a time when she would have marched up to the lady of death, demanded that she return him to them. She would have taken her mace and her holy symbol and she would have charged down the Crow Goddess herself. Burned bright enough that all those dark, midnight feathers would have bleached, that the Queen would have screamed and writhed and ultimately given Vax back to them again.

 _Then she’s going to have to deal with me_ , she remembers promising, to a man that has passed from a lifetime now past, _and we’re going to have a problem._

Pike feels a long, aching pull of regret tug through her stomach. Once she would have done it, stormed through the kingdom of the Raven Queen to pluck him back from her clutches, his dusky skin pale and newborn once more—but he hadn’t wanted her to, and it’s too late now. Far, far too late now.

She sighs.

Across the room, Grog lets out a loud snort. He rolls over. Watching him, Pike has an odd, sudden need to walk over and curl up at his side, the way they used to when they were children—her back pressed to his massive midriff, his rattling breaths vibrating through her chest. She doesn’t, though.

It’s a night for goddesses, for martyrs and ghosts and regrets. Grog, for all his endearing qualities, has never cared for such things.

She sits alone at the windowsill. Her back cramps as the hours pass, but she doesn’t move, hardly twitches. She presses her bare brown feet to the edge of the ledge and watches them go pale with cold. She’s not praying. She’s not sleeping, either. Her hand stays loosely wrapped around her symbol until the fog lifts.

The next morning arrives with a letter from Westruun. It’s formal and stilted and sorry. In his sleep, it says. Peacefully, it reassures. He lived a good long life and left a legacy, it reminds.

As Grog stands rigid and open-mouthed beside her, furious denial creasing his brow, Pike puts her hand to her necklace. Her throat aches.

 _Oh, Vax_ , she thinks. _Please tell me you didn’t._

 

-

 

(“I’m telling you to go.”

“Pawpaw, I’m happy to stay here—”

“Young Pike, it’s _my_ ears that are going, not yours. So, um, listen to me! Go to Vasselheim! See that big temple you built, lead the people in, ah, in worship. Teach others how to heal and, and, be healed. They wouldn’t have asked you if they didn’t think it was important you go.”

“Then maybe we should both go. No, listen to me, _listen_ —we both go! Keyleth can take us. We both go, and teach, and see the believers. Then we come back, together. Don’t you want to see the temple?”

“Oh, child.” He shakes his head, his hand trembling. “I don’t…” He blinks, shakes his head. “No, no. What….” He fades off, eyes getting less focused.

“Won’t you come to Vasselheim with me?” She has to raise her voice a lot for him to hear these days, enough that she can feel each word grate on her throat. “Me, and Grog, and Scanlan?”

“Vasselheim?” He frowns. “No, no.”

“Then I’ll stay with you.”

He shakes his head again. “No. I... What were we talking about?”

“I got an invitation from the temple in Vasselheim. To stay for a residency period.”

“Ahh. And you should go!” His finger spears the air in confident assurance, though it quickly wavers. “Go, child.”

“Won’t you come, then?”

“Vasselheim? No, no. Too cold for old bones.”

“I won’t go without you. You’re….”

He stares at her. “I’m what?”

Pike lapses into silence. She rests her head in her hands, pushes her fingers through her white curls.

“Oh, now.” She feels a weak hand on her back. “Braveheart. I’m telling you to go. Listen to an old gnome, hmm?”

“Are you sure?”

“What?”

“ _Are you sure?”_

“Sure?” She looks up just in time to see him frown. “Sure about what?”)

 

-

 

She stops at the temple before they begin on their journey south.  

It’s an imposing structure, still. She is a speck beneath the four rounding levels, their concentric ceilings drawing her sightline almost completely vertical. At the top of the inner spire, caught in the harsh northern glare, the ruby glitters in the hands of the winged statue. The outer walls are worn smooth. They’re nothing like the ragged rock they extracted from the ruins. She remembers the weight of the tower as she restored it from the ground, the tremble of combined magic as she drew other believers to her side. The lingering heave of the stone is enough to make her shoulders ache. She bled in this temple, she sweat in this temple, she cried in this temple. Her silent screams—of impatience, of worry, of self-doubt—fueled everything but its ultimate completion.

She sits at the base of the spire like a child, her knees digging into the cold marble.

“Hello,” she says aloud. There is no one else to hear her—Martha took one look at her face and cleared the temple of the few acolytes inside. “I know he’s with you now.” Her voice cracks and folds. She takes a shuddering breath and tries again. “He never got to see this place. Not the, the tower. The statue. The new worshippers; there’s so _many,_ and so _young._ He never got to see what we did together. I think he—” She swallows. “I think he would have loved it.”

Pike bows her head. “I know, um, he lived a good life. A long life. He gave it all in your service. He saved a lot of lives, helped a lot of people. He saved me.

“He was kind, and he was forgiving. I know he’s with you, a pearl on your beach, and I'm glad, but—” Tears are streaming down her face, and the world around her is reduced to grey streaks. “I wasn’t ready for him to go yet. There was still so much I wanted to, to tell him. I wasn’t ready to lose any–anybody else. I wasn’t _ready_.”

A summer breeze flows through the temple, out of place in the icy mountains of Vasselheim. Her hot tears dash onto the floor. The faint whispers of warm hands cup her face for a brief instant, and then they fade. She sits, desolate, unable to sob but unable to stop crying.

“I gotta—I need to go now,” she admits eventually. Her voice comes out a croak. “Grog is waiting.”

Silence fills the temple. Pike stands.

Wiping at her eyes, kissing her own tears off her palms, she turns and leaves.

 

-

 

(When Pike is seventeen, goliaths come and drag her great-great-grandfather away from her. They pluck him from the forest and beat him till he’s senseless. Pike, sitting before their family altar, feels sick to her stomach and doesn’t know why.

One goliath stops the herd from killing the old man that day. He’s younger than the others, still pudgy around his cheeks; when his uncle steps up to cleave the gnome in two, he still has the juvenile idiocy to say no.

It costs him dearly.

Pike isn’t entirely sure how the two of them, both battered within an inch of their lives, make it back onto the path leading to Westruun. She is sure of how she finds them—a hammering feeling in her chest that pushes her up, out of the house, into the woods. She tastes copper in the air and feels dread clog her throat. There, on the path, shattered glasses, there, in the dirt, bloodstains, there, in a clearing, two bodies lying very, very still.

She drops to her knees beside them, shaking first the one she recognizes—she can’t lose him, she can’t, she won’t—and then sits back with an exhale when he blinks his gummy eyes open.

“I’m fine, young Pike,” he rasps. “This…” He coughs. His hand pats the massive lump beside him. “This boy saved me. I’m alright.”

Pressing a hand to his chest to be sure, feeling the warmth of life beating through his soul, Pike jerks her head into a nod. “Okay, okay, okay. It’s gonna be okay,” she promises. “It’s gonna….”

She moves on to the prone figure beside him, though she doesn’t see how he could be called _boy_ —he’s easily taller than three gnomes put together, and muscled to boot. Straining, she manages to nudge him onto his side. And there she sees it: his round cheeks and his unwrinkled hands and the _fear_ that peeks out from behind the bloody mess of his eyes.

He’s young as her, if not younger. He’s young, and dumb, and scared. Pike puts a palm to his neck and feels the slow tide of approaching death roll through him.

With an urgent prayer, her face tipping skyward, she presses one hand to the sandpaper rough callouses of his back. Her other hand grabs for her pendant. Please, she thinks, feeling a breath rattle out of the goliath’s mouth. He’s not ready to go yet.

Please.

Sarenrae’s light floods her mind, white-hot to the thought and cascading down her chest and into her forearms. As she’s healed fevers and wheezes and bruises, she heals this now—her head blazes with effort as she feels the bones snapping together beneath her fingers, wet muscle sliding back to each torn joint, swelling contracting in the brain. The world is still and calm around her, leaves slowly dancing down to the grassy clearing, but to her it’s _burning_. Fire rages through her head, crunching and crackling. The inside of her cheek burns. Wet, liquid metal coats her teeth. A moan escapes but she isn’t sure if it’s from her or him, because he’s teetering, now, between the Here and the There, and she’s his only tether. She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut and—

Then she blinks and her arms are limp, settled on her thighs. She’s collapsed backward onto her heels; the boy-giant coughs weakly into the dirt. Blood slicks down his face, rust red on grey-morning blue, but he’s coughing. He’s breathing.

Death doesn’t take him.

(At seventeen, Pike still has the juvenile idiocy to say no.)

Her eyes are sticky with tears, and her heart soars so high she can taste it on her tongue. She giggles for a minute, punch-drunk with exhaustion. Eventually, she pulls together the strength to stand. She levers her great-grandfather up, brushing off his cheeks—he’ll be proud of her later, so proud, but for now he’s mostly incoherent. Together, somehow, they take the goliath between them, and stumble along back down the path towards Westruun. After squeezing into their house, they prop the boy up with pillows in the living room. They collapse to his left.

Finally, nearly a whole night of dozing later, the goliath trains bleary eyes on Pike. “Uh…hullo.”

She blinks awake and smiles at him, still wrung out from the healing. “Hi.”

“Who’re you?”

“I’m Pike,” she says. “The old guy’s great-great-granddaughter.”

“Oh… Tha’s why you’re so small.” He flicks his gaze down to his own ragged body, then back to her. “’M not dead, am I?”

“Nah, not dead. You tried _really_ hard, though.”

“Did not!”

She smiles again. “I know, I know, sorry.”

The boy blinks. “’M Grog.”

“Grog?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool name. How do you feel, Grog?”

"Alrigh’. Did you…mm…d’jou save me?”

She nods. “Well, it was mostly Sar–”

And she doesn’t get a chance to finish before he beams at her. “That was really cool, like.”

“Yeah?” She grins and moves to lean against his massive thigh, and he doesn’t flinch away. They sit there for a moment, breathing deeply. Pike watches the steady rise and fall of Grog’s chest, the deliberate way that his thick fingers stroke the hardwood floors.

She doesn’t know it yet, but this boy will be her brother. She will be his and he will be hers in a way that will run deeper than race, deeper than spirit—she will love him when he will grow to paint his fists with the blood of others and his grin with his own, bare-toothed and red-stained and spitting clumps of himself out into the dirt. He will love her when she will grow to burn goddess-bright in the middle of battlefields, a pleasure flicking in her eyes as she tears through enemy muscle and bone that would be impossible to describe as holy. And she will love him too in the quiet moments, in the let’s sit and drink and paint moments, in the I’m gonna teach you how to read moments. And he will love her back as her heart grows five times too big; he will love her through the tremble of her fingers and the chantings of revivals and the clawings of her own self-doubt.

But here, in this evening-lit room, neither of them can predict any of that.

They just sit. They just are.

Finally, there’s a stir from the third figure beside them.

(They will love him too, both of them, to their very bones. They are his war-torn, abandoned children and he will always be their savior. He will be stability, and candlelight, and home.)

“Pike?” the old man croaks.

“Yeah, Pawpaw?”

Squinting without his glasses, he looks between her and Grog. He says: “I think we’re going to need some bigger doors.”)

 

-

 

Grog marches stiffly on their fourth day through the mountain passes. Ale has left bruises beneath his eyes, though none of the good cheer meant to come with it. His jowls, heavier than they’d been in his youth, are taut and strained. It’s the first day he’s not crying.

She’s not sure if it’s an improvement or not. She doesn’t think it is.

They reach a peak and stop for a minute, staring out. The mountains are sharp and bleak. Black rock juts into a sky so pale as to almost be white, while below them the trail twists and turns. They’d decided to cut through the Eastern range to save time, but they’d sacrificed the easily-traversed caravan roads in the process. Part of Pike begs to reach their destination soon; another part wants to stay on the snowy trails forever.

With a silent nod to one another, she and Grog continue down the rock face. Pike clanks her way over the crags and cracks. The morning wears on, sun glaring off of icy banks. Black spots dance before her eyes and the high-altitude air burns in her lungs. On a slope to her left, a small evergreen bush catches her attention, wizened and toughened by time. Distracted, she hardly notices how loose one of the stones on the path is.

The stone slips and she tumbles, her arms flailing. By sheer luck she catches onto one of the bush’s branches, clumsily gripping it in her gauntleted hand, and her momentum jerks to a halt. Her shoulder screams. She pants, her face contorted against the freezing rock. She can feel herself bruising along the joints of her armor, and curses her old refusal to take the heavy plate off.

Large hands reach down and pick her up, setting her back on the path gently. Grog stares down at her. “You alrigh’?”

“Yeah,” she says. The cacophony of her impact is still echoing off the farthest peaks. She waits for her breath to even out, and looks up at him. “Are you?”

He grunts, glancing away, and starts moving again. Pike follows him, wishing he would crack a joke or try to nudge her into feeling better.

Her mind goes numb for a while after that. She keeps one foot in front of the other, knees sore. She feels so tangled up in her own skin, frustrated and ragged and buzzing—she revels in every painful drop of sweat, even as she wants everything to just _stop_. It’s a few hours before a noise breaks the monotonous thudding of boots-on-mountain.

The noise turns into a sniffle, and then Grog’s crying again in earnest.

“Oh,” Pike murmurs. “Hey, hey.”

He sobs, staggering, hands up to his face. Her stomach aches. She’s supposed to be able to fix this. Why can’t she _fix_ this? Why wasn’t she there, in Westruun, why couldn’t she have coaxed the life back into his eyes, why can’t she stop Grog from hurting, why can’t she—

As they stumble to the bottom of the goat path, Pike leans into the side of her brother’s leg. Blearily, he reaches down to lift her up by the armpits. He clutches her to his weathered chest like a child would a favored ragdoll. Pike’s shoulders protest, still raw from their recent encounter with the mountainside, but she makes no sound; he needs this. His chin settles on the crown of her head and his tears slip into her hair. She pats his breast.

“S’not _fair_ ,” he chokes. “He was so _good_ , an’, an’ _small_ , an’ I.... He said he’d never leave me. Never leave _us_.”

Pike can’t say anything to that. Not without breaking down entirely, utterly, irreparably. She can’t say— _he never promised that, he just said he’d never_ abandon _us_ —she can’t say— _I know, fuck it all, it’s not fucking fair—_ she can’t say— _stop crying, we need to get home_. She can only clench her jaw against the pain in her throat, flare her nostrils against the urge to tear up. If she cries here, in this snowy ravine southeast of Vasselheim, she’ll lie down and never be able to stand up again.

She presses her forehead to Grog’s chest, his skin coarse and warm beneath the patchy furs he’d donned at her request, for a few more seconds. Then she leans away from him, pushing at his grip until he lets her down. After a deep breath, she takes one of his massive hands in hers. She squeezes it until he blinks his eyes and focuses on her.

“We can make this,” she says, and her voice is tough and sure and not as bleeding-raw-unraveling as she’s feeling inside. She imagines the cold seeping into her blood, into her stubborn reserve. “Grog, you hear me?”

He swallows another sob, wiping snot from under his nose. “Uh-huh.”

She stares him down, a real mother-hen glare. “We’re gonna cross this mountain range.”

“Alrigh’,” Grog agrees. He hiccups.

“Monstahs.”

“Mon— _hic—_ monstahs.”

They clamp their hands together as they stare up at the trail above them. This feels like the highest peak they’ve seen so far; it blocks out most of the sky, and the snow along its breadth is crunchier for the shade. She hates it for seeming so insurmountable. She hates it for seeming so damning.

But Pike is the champion of the goddess of forgiveness: she can forgive the mountain for its size, just as she can forgive her brother for his tears, and the north for its snow. She can forgive the rock for bruising her and the sun for its blinding rays. She can even forgive Vax for never responding to her prayers.

She and Grog step onto the new slope and begin to climb.

 

-

 

( _Up and back, up and back, up and back_. Pike sits, flush-faced, on a stool beside the basin, warm water sloshing up to her elbows. She scrubs at the edge of the platter, soap foaming up as she scrapes at the crusted stain left over from last night’s supper. Her tears have long dried, but now they’re caked to her face, crunchy at the corners of her eyes.

A door shuts from the house—she hears the crunch of grass as a familiar, slow gait makes its way across the backyard.

“Pike,” says her great-great-grandfather. Eventually reaching the clover patch where she’s set up the washing table, he grabs an upside-down half-barrel that he uses as an outdoor stool. He shifts it so it’s next to her. He sits with relief, like the short walk cost him. “Almost done?”

“What?” she asks, not looking up.

“You’ve, ah, been out here a while. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” She plasters on a half-smile, her eyes fixed on the white bubbles and her pruned fingers. Her dark hair, streaked with purple, falls into her face.

“Hmm.” He puts a hand on her shoulder.

She keeps scrubbing. “Almost done, Pawpaw, I promise.”

“Child…” He sighs. “It’s…it’s alright to be upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Mm.” She doesn’t look up, but if she did she would see his face creased with dark lines. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. Those boys wanted to make trouble, and, ah…well, wanting to make trouble has an awful knack for leading to trouble. They meant to hurt that woman and they did.” He squeezes her shoulder. “They were stronger than you and there were more of them than you. You couldn’t have changed what happened.”

“I couldn’t?” she spits. Realizing how immature it sounds, she bows her head. She keeps scrubbing the platter.

“You helped her as much as you could. You gave her more time.”

Pike makes a noncommittal noise.

“You did, Pike. You did.”

Silence falls, for a moment. When Pike runs her fingers over the platter, the edge comes away smooth. She sets it to the side, on a cloth for drying, and lifts the big pot into the basin instead.

Drawing his hand back from her shoulder, her grandfather shifts slightly in his seat. She sees the flash of ceremonial cloth out of the corner of her eye. Suddenly, everything comes crashing down again.

“She was just…they just kept _going_.” Her voice breaks. She scrubs the bowl around the bottom, where the food likes to harden. She tries again, her voice quiet, raspy: “They started with taunting her, then with the– the hitting. And I yell for ‘em to stop but they don’t, Pawpaw, they– They don’t stop. She just ends up lying there, all messed up. Blood everywhere. All messed up.”

She’s sick of crying, but her hands are too soapy to dash away the wetness in her eyes. Her fingers tremble as she tries to scrub. _Up and back, up and back._

“That’s…” He clears his throat. “That’s an awful thing to have seen, Pike. You’re—I’m sorry. You’re too young to have had to…. You’re allowed to grieve for her. I need you to understand that. You’re allowed to be upset.”

“But I’m not upset!” And now her grip on the pot fails, and it bangs off the bottom of the basin, and she drops her scrub brush too, startled. Water splashes up her front, a small droplet catching her eyelash. Her hands dangle uselessly in the water. She hangs her head. “I’m not upset.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m–” She looks up, staring at her grandfather with puffy, bloodshot eyes. “I’m _angry_.”

He blinks, taken aback.

I’m so angry, and– and I think it’ll eat me up.” Her voice cracks again and she wishes it would stop _doing that_. “All I can think about is finding those boys, making sure that they never do that again. I never want them to do _anything_ again.”

He looks so gentle, sitting in the cool grey light of the afternoon. Spring has settled in full force, blooming trees rustling in each of the neighboring yards. Pike can’t look at them. She can’t look at them, and now she wishes she wasn’t looking at him—his eyes are so dark, so sad. He reaches for her, but she jerks back, hand hitting the side of the metal basin.

“I’m so mad,” she says again. “I want to kill them, Pawpaw.”

The words hang between them.

“Child–”

“I want them _dead_.” Her eyes brim with tears again. Everything blurs. “How–”

And he reaches for her again, and this time she folds into his arms. Her head rests on his collarbone, her long ear pressing up to his collarbone. Her hands, dripping, cooling, wet his shirt. She lets out an almost-sob.

“I,” deep, shuddering breath, “w-want them dead. I can’t forgive them—I won’t. I’ll never forgive them. I wanna kill them. But that’s so awful, that’s– And we need to forgive, but I–”

“Shhh,” he says. “Shh.”

She coughs, once, twice. Then she quiets, waiting. Listening. She can hear his heartbeat.

“Pike, forgiveness isn’t like that. And even if it was…” He sighs. “Pike, you need to forgive _yourself_. Forgive yourself for your powerlessness. Forgive your grief. Forgive your anger. Before anything else—forgive yourself.”

She can’t breathe. “It’s hard,” she chokes out. “It’s hard, Pawpaw, it’s so hard–”

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know. You’ve got that big heart in you, and Everlight, sometimes I wish you didn’t. But Pike—you need to try, okay?”

Tears rush over again. She buries her face in his shirt.

He holds her tight. “Forgive yourself first, child. Just try.”)

 

-

 

When Keyleth meets them on the coast, the ocean is beating against the beaches, sheeting out cold and harsh wind across the local township. The woman strikes a dramatic figure, emerging from the mist. Her hair is blown over with salt, her antlers tracking shadows over her angular cheekbones. Her freckles are dark and thick. The past fifteen years have hardly brushed over her, though her movements are far more assured than they once were.

“Keyleth?” Grog asks at Pike’s side. His brow creases.

Pike stares at her, just as nonplussed—she’d sent word to Scanlan, obviously, and JB, but she hadn’t wanted to worry the rest of them. There’s no reason for Keyleth to know what had happened. No reason for Keyleth to be here, on this hamlet’s lone street, at all.

“Hey,” Keyleth calls. She beams, sweeping forward. Her shawl of leaves rustles as her bony arms cinch first Grog and then Pike into a hug. The smell of wet earth and something floral clings to her skin.

Pike returns the hug naturally, without thinking. Keyleth doesn’t often leave Zephra, and it’s been almost a year since they’ve last seen each other—the last time was for Ricky and Jo’s birthday, when they’d all come storming in through Whitestone like a band of orcs. Pike finds that her fondness for Keyleth is warming her for the first time in their week of travel.

“It has been too long,” Keyleth says into her ear, somehow reading her mind. “I missed you.”

Pike nods. “Me too,” she manages.

Keyleth breaks them apart, and then her grin falters. “I heard. The news, I mean, I—um, I’m sorry. It’s terrible.”

“Thanks,” Grog answers, uncomfortable.

Keyleth’s hand finds Pike’s wrist and squeezes. There’s a knowing ache to her eyes as she says, “Words can’t do it justice.”

Pike smiles again, though it’s more forced. “Oh, how–how did you find out?”

“Not from _you_ , that’s for sure.” Keyleth’s chiding sounds almost like Vex, for a second, but then she’s taking a breath. “Sorry, sorry, that came out harsh. I scry on you—all of you—regularly, to make sure you’re alright. But when I checked in yesterday…. Well, I, I realized. You should have told us. We would have come.”

“You didn’t tell ‘em?” The furrow between Grog’s brows is practically a canyon by now.

Keyleth takes a look at Pike’s face and then waves her hands as if to dispel the issue. “We can talk about it later, right? You must be cold, and tired.”

With little pause, she guides them into the local inn. She sorts the innkeeper out with a flick of her wrist and the sharp clink of gold, and he rushes to lead them up the stairs to the rooms he has available—an adjoining single and double with fogged-over views. He bows to Keyleth on his way out, and she nods gracefully back, thanking him. The column of her neck is held at a regal angle, her red curls swaying just past the tilt of her chin.

Pike remembers a bumbling, gangly, awkward girl, blurting out swear words in Westruun.

Her eyes sting.

After a moment, Pike walks over and hops up on the medium-sized bed, armor clanking. The sheets are stiff and smell of salt. She thinks of sea wind, rope-callouses, and cold ocean spray. She sighs.

Keyleth settles beside her, crinkling her cape, while Grog, too heavy for the bed, plops cross-legged on the floor.

There’s a pause.

“I can take you the rest of the way to Westruun tomorrow,” Keyleth offers, her voice made loud by the silence. “If you want.”

Pike considers it. She stares down at her lap.

She feels stubborn and mixed-up and not a little childish: Keyleth can travel _anywhere_ in just a moment. They wouldn’t even have needed to come all this way if Pike’d just gotten over herself and contacted her to begin with. But she doesn’t regret their trek through the mountains, and that’s what draws her hesitation—making the journey by foot had done her some good. It had frosted over the swishy, flooding part of her chest that had felt like it was going to drown her.

The next stage of an old-fashioned voyage would be longer, though. Does she really want to cross the great sea by ship? The ocean is familiar, but it is also a bitter friend. She knows its temperaments, its capricious humor and its squalls. She doesn’t know if she has it in her to fight it even half of the way to Exandria. Whatever catharsis the crash and spit of waves granted her before (she used to _scream_ into it, loud, so loud, and no one could hear her and it was just herself and her goddess and her anger), she doubts it would be the same now. Besides, Grog hates sailing.

So, it should be a no-brainer to tell Keyleth yes.

But.

Deep down, Pike has always thought herself a coward. A dragon’s death on her shoulders does little to counter how weak she feels, some days, especially when compared to the rest of Vox Machina. She has never feared what she should fear, and has feared far more what others can brush off. And so…

The prospect of returning to Westruun, to an empty house, rolls her stomach in terror.

“Pike?” Grog asks. A frown is etched at his lips, but he’s waiting for her to say something—he thinks this is her decision.

And maybe it is. But it’s not one she’d like to make.

“Of course,” she finally says, her voice rougher than she means it to be. “That would be amazing, Keyleth. Thank you.”

Nighttime falls soon enough.

Grog and Keyleth wander off slightly before dusk, probably to go grab some drinks. They ask Pike to join them, heads tilted and eyes hopeful, but she can’t bring herself to get up—she can’t bring herself to go joke or reminisce or start a brawl. She waves them on their way with a gentle smile, a small laugh, a weight trapped in her throat that she swallows down.

“Be good, you two,” she bids. The look they share as they leave means one of them will be under the table by the end of the night.

So they go.

(If Pike were as used to being left behind as she pretends to be, this would all be a lot easier.)

By the time Grog stumbles back into the room, Pike is sitting in the window seat. He doesn’t see her, utterly pissed as he is; he needs Keyleth’s support to stagger into the adjoining single, and he passes out as soon as she gets him onto the floor. When Keyleth comes back into the bigger room, her hair is mussed, her lips twisted up.

“I hope you kept some gold,” she says. “Because Grog drank up all of his.”

She pauses when she gets halfway to the window, her smile fading. Sand trails in through the door, an almost invisible, grainy path, and it ends at Pike’s perch. The woman’s boots, knocked sideways on the floor, are caked with it.

“Pike?” Keyleth asks.

Pike turns to face the room. She’s aware of Keyleth’s eyes sweeping her face in concern; she knows her hair is ringed out around her face, baby hairs wild and braids undone. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I have more money. Is Grog alright?”

Keyleth answers after a pause. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, not yet. It’ll take time.”

“Yeah,” Pike agrees.

“Are you…are you doing okay? We didn’t really get to talk. I hope you didn’t want me to stay, instead of go out….”

“C’mere,” Pike beckons, arms extended. She smiles and it comes easily this time, with Keyleth so close. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

She joins Pike on the window seat and gets tugged into a hug. It’s a sweet moment, the kind only the two of them can really have—sincere and kind and halfway innocent. Keyleth’s discarded her shawl, tucked over the chest at the foot of the bed. Her headdress is set on the table by the door. Pike, for her part, has finally taken off her armor, and instead wears an old, soft tunic. With the fireplace crackling across the room, the embrace is warm, though Keyleth’s skin is still pinched from the cold outside.

When they break apart, each leaning back into opposite walls of the nook, Keyleth asks, “Why do you smell like salt?”

“I, uh, went for a walk.”

“A walk?”

And Pike grins at herself, because it seems almost silly, now. The seriousness with which she had clunked down to the beach, the solemnity with which she had glared out at the waves. She’d gone there originally to rage at the ocean, to curse and scream and burn bright against the crashing and battering of the tide, but the moment the water had lapped at her boots…. The moment the water had lapped at her boots, freezing and gentle, her anger had been sucked away. And the way she’d stared, then, desolate, out at the black coast—well, here, with Keyleth’s legs tucked up against hers, it’s starting to all feel pretty stupid.

“Yeah,” she laughs, “a walk.”

Keyleth glances down at her sandy boots. “Was it good?”

She shrugs. “A bit chilly.”

“Oh. Well, who cares about walks anyway.”

“Right?”

“Right?”

They tip their heads towards the window at the same time, smiling softly. Keyleth reaches and tangles their palms together. Pike sighs, content.

Silence reigns for a while. The fire burns low and the light grows dim. The next time Pike glances out the window, she’s hit by a rush of déjà vu: there’s fog and darkness and slowly creeping cold. _A night for martyrs_ , she thinks, and then regrets it.

Grief eddies back into her stomach. She swallows.

"Keyleth," she asks, feeling dreadful for not asking earlier, “how are you doing? With everything.”

“I’m okay!”

Pike raises her eyebrows.

“Pike, you can’t ask me that, not when—not with….”

“But I’m asking. So—how are you?”

“I’m…” Keyleth trails off. She shakes her head. “After fifteen years, I thought it was supposed to be easy. Easier. And I mean—it is, obviously. But…it’s not _easy_.”

Pike squeezes her hand.

“It’s just not fair,” Keyleth continues, and she, too, is looking outside. Her voice is far away. “That’s what I keep coming…coming back to. You know? No matter how much time passes, I can never get over that—it is all so unfair.”

And Pike knows she’s seventeen years older, but without her cloak and her headdress Keyleth looks nearly as young as when they’d first met. Pale-faced, brow furrowed, green eyes swimming. She’s both fragile and unbreakable at once. And her plea is like a child’s (like Pike’s, like Grog’s)— _unfair._

“Death’s a lot of things,” replies Pike. “But I don’t think fair’s one of them.”

“If you were one of my students, I would correct you.”

Pike smiles sadly. “What would you say to them?”

“There is…. There is the circle of life, you know?” Keyleth traces her fingertips over Pike’s calloused knuckles. “Everything has its winter. Everything has its time. Some trees need to fall so that animals can live in their logs, or so that fungi can grow or so…so that the soil can get richer. People are like that, too—when they are felled, they can leave behind a legacy of possibilities. And I want to believe that, but. That is…that is just fucking bullshit.” She sighs, shaking her head at herself. “Sometimes, when people ask for advice, I just say what sounds right.”

“Oh, good.” Pike squeezes her hand. “Me too.”

“No, but you’re so, you’re… And I’m…”

“The Voice of the Tempest,” Pike reminds. “Headmaster of the Ashari.”

When she looks back at Keyleth’s face, the weight of her leadership has settled her again. She nods. “Yes.”

“It suits you, Keyleth.”

And in fifty years, a hundred years, eight-hundred years, Keyleth will incline her head and know deep in her chest that she was always meant to fill her position. But not yet. She frowns instead, says, “I hope so.”

“You’re doing _wonderfully_.”

Keyleth blushes. “Thank you.”

Pike presses her free hand to Keyleth’s bent knee. They sit for a few more minutes, until the fire’s flickering on its last embers. Then Pike yawns.

“We should probably, um, get some rest,” Keyleth suggests. At Pike’s sleepy nod, she uncurls herself from the window seat, swinging her legs over the side. She lets go of Pike’s hand and makes for the farther of the two beds.

“Would you…” Pike hates how small her own voice comes out. “I…I don’t really want to sleep alone.”

And Pike _hates_ how Keyleth’s face half-crumples, she hates it, Pike shouldn’t be adding _more_ shit to the stuff Keyleth’s already been dealing with—

“Of course,” says Keyleth. She moves to the side of one bed and shoves it toward the middle of the room until it lines up with the edge of the other. “Done.”

Eventually, they end up tucked together, warm beneath several blankets. The room presses dark around them. It’s hardly illuminated by anything beyond a faint grey sheen from the window. Pike, an apostrophe of a gnome with her knees tucked to her ribs, lies comfortably in the hollow of Keyleth’s bony chest. Both breathe in and out.

Neither sleeps for a long time.

 

-

 

(Pike screams, thrashing. She’s tangled in the bed sheets, held in place by twists of the fabric, and she can’t move. As she gulps in the sweaty night air, she chokes—she can’t breathe, and then she’s sobbing. The imprints of her nightmare are still thick on the backs of her eyelids. Grog, flat on his back, a dark patch spreading across his chest as he rattles out his last breath; Keyleth, her long limbs bent at wrong angles, her red hair matted with her blood; Percy, his face locked in a mask of pain and outrage, staring lifelessly in Vex’s direction; Vex, slumped in the shadows, eyes glass; Vax, half disintegrated, a dark shadowy feather creeping over his remaining skin; Scanlan, blood bubbling from between his lips, a small smile still hollow on his face. Pike, in the midst of all of them, unharmed, trying to force every ounce of her power into an explosion of reviving energy—

Pike, failing.

Pike, suddenly dying herself, her chest caved in, darkness encroaching. This time not even the sea would bring her back.

She’s still sobbing, awake now, sweaty and shivering. The door to her childhood bedroom creaks open, a thin shaft of flickering lamplight shining through the gap. Slowly, a doddering figure makes his way across the room. The bed dimples as he sits down beside her. Setting his lamp down on Pike’s rickety old bedside table, he reaches under him to pull the blankets and sheets down the bed. Legs and torso now freed, she jerks upright, curling forwards over her knees and panting raggedly.

Her great-great-grandfather runs his wrinkled hand over her back, murmuring a gentle Gnomish lullaby. _Oh, little one…_

Eventually, she catches her breath enough to look up at him. “I’m s–” her teeth click with her shivering– “sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he sighs. “Shh, shh.”

He pulls her to his frail chest, his familiar embrace encircling her hard muscle and just holding her there. Pike starts to calm.

An owl hoots from outside the window, startling her again. Heart hammering in her ears, she sees the dim room around her only as wet streaks of shadow— _Grog is bleeding out Vax is being stolen Scanlan choked on his own blood she failed them she failed them all_ —and all that comes out are gut-wrenching, ugly sobs.

Her grandfather presses her head down into his nightshirt. Distantly, Pike’s sure she must be soaking the fabric with her tears, but the fear and trauma blur most of her mind. He increases the pressure of his hug after a second; she’s shocked to find that the compression is _good_. It grounds her. She can feel the cotton sheet beneath her, hear the calm rustle of trees, and taste the bitter flavor of a nightmare in her mouth.

After a few long minutes, her shivering tapers off. She nods and leans away from him, wiping at her gummy mouth and snotty nose with her sleeve. He pushes himself back until he’s crosslegged squarely in the center of her bed.

“I used to get night terrors too, you know.”

Pike squeezes her eyes closed. She doesn’t want to hear this.

“Frightful stuff! I would be falling, or starving. Leaving all your family is no joke—they would come to me in my sleep, claim that it was my fault if they fell ill or unhappy or if their slippery wrists got caught. How’s that, eh?”

Pike’s chin settles on her knees and she tries to breathe.

“Other nights I would just go into temple naked. Can you imagine that? Old Pawpaw, gone to prayer with his backside gleaming like the moon on a pond? Enough to wake me in a cold sweat!”

He smiles at her like he’s expecting her to laugh, like his wheezy old ramblings should cast away the flickering darkness. When she doesn’t react, his breath whistles out of him like an inflated cow bladder that’s been punctured.

He suddenly looks all of his three-hundred or so years.

“The worst,” he admits, voice free of its charming old cadence, “happened after you– When you–” He doesn’t finish.

Tears stream from Pike’s eyes. She sniffles, then coughs. _Hacks_ is more like it—her lungs feel like they’re trying to expel something vicious and cloying. Bad air, Pawpaw used to call it. She coughs and coughs. When she finishes, she feels even smaller. Pathetic, needy. Childish. Ashamed.

They’re all still alive, she reminds herself.

They’re not dead.

They’re not dead.

(She’s not dead.)

He reaches out and grabs one of her hands. His is bigger, still, just a bit, and it’s layered with wrinkles where Pike has nothing but callouses. He squeezes it gently. He lifts his other hand to tip up her chin. He looks her in the eyes with his shadowed blue ones and looks like he’s staring into her very soul.

“When adventuring gets hard, braveheart,” he whispers, voice nearly blown away in the dark, “you can always come home to me.”)

 

-

 

They gather their stuff together in the morning, exhausted and dull, the fog-damp sunk into their bones. Grog’s temper has improved enough that he raises Pike onto his shoulder as they step out onto the main street. She drops a kiss onto his bald head.

They tramp outside of town, to the edge of the rugged cliff face, and stop in front of a hunched cypress.

“So,” Keyleth says, and her teeth flash in a sad smile, “Westruun?”

Pike answers with a brave smile of her own.

The three of them step into the darkness that folds around the tree. They blink out into a bright, shining clearing. Morning warmth breathes onto their salt-sprayed skin; the forest shivers pleasantly, blades of grass rippling around their feet. Green leaves flutter, going golden just at the edges, while birds chirp from their branches. A second passes where they all blink, startled by the drastic contrast of scenery, but Pike quickly regains her bearings.

She knows this patch of forest. She and Grog used to play here—they would collect truffles and bruises and somehow always end up with more of the latter, and then they’d stomp back through the underbrush with grins and muddy knees. She glances down at Grog to see if he recognizes it. She’s not surprised that he doesn’t seem to.

After all, that was over thirty years ago now.

“Wil–” She breaks off before she properly starts speaking. “The house is that way.” She points off to their left, down a cheerfully overgrown path.

Grog nods, setting off with large strides. Pike lists until she loops her arm around his neck, tugging herself back upright. Keyleth follows, gliding over the grass, her cape rustling the other leaves beneath her. The end of the tree line appears before them, and then there’s the scraggly harvest of a vegetable patch, and then they’re standing in Pike’s childhood backyard, untended and haphazardly sown.

If she didn’t know any better, she could fool herself into thinking that the house looks like it has since the post-dragon restoration. The roof is a little more dilapidated, sure, and the windows sag and peel, but the woodwork is still sturdy. The beansprouts in the lee of the shed have never kept to their poles anyway, and she doesn’t think she would’ve been able to recognize the pumpkin patch if it weren’t mired in nettles. It’s not like the puffy flowers in the grass have ever been poppies, or marigolds, or tulips; dandelions were always Trickfoot favorites, if only because they needed no maintenance. There are a couple old half-barrels clumped by the fence.

“Nothin’s changed,” Grog grumbles, reading her mind.

“I–“ Pike swallows and nods. She puts a gentle palm on the side of his neck, urging her hand not to shake.

They make their way through the greenery to the back door. Carefully, Grog kneels so Pike can jump off; they shuck their boots together, knocking the mud off against the steps. Taking a deep breath to bolster herself, she pulls the key out from under the mat and unlocks the door.

“Keyleth?” she calls, putting off twisting the knob.

“I’m right here,” Keyleth says from behind her. She’s solemn, steady.

Pike pulls open the door and steps into the dim hall. She’s hit by a waft of musty, sour air. The house smells of dust and damp, with a note of—

She blanches. She knows that smell.

The house smells of shut windows and _decay_. Her stomach flips so violently she fears she’ll lose the couple eggs she had for breakfast.

(How long was he here before they found him? Alone, soiled, bruising grey and purple?)

A few steps carry her out of the shadowed hallway into the darkened kitchen, dishes left piled in the sink. Sunlight splashes in from the window, just enough to illuminate half of the scratched table—two chairs are still slightly pulled out, like they’re waiting for someone to come back. She feels like she’s in Emon’s theater district with Scanlan, staring at a stage right before the actors come out. There’s a heavy expectation in the air.

She bites her tongue: there _shouldn’t be_.

No one is going to finish the molding cup of tea on the table. No one is going to carve another wooden spoon or rocking chair. No one is going to pop up from under the floorboards, eccentric and forgetful and kind. No one is going to come back to press a kiss to the top of her head, tell her they’re so proud of her, or set an old Gnomish recipe to simmer on the stove.

Pike’s throat tightens. Her eyes sting, painfully dry. She is fifty years old and an orphan and exhausted.

She looks up at Grog carefully, stooped beneath the low ceiling, and he looks down at her. Then they both look away. Keyleth traipses into the kitchen behind them, staring at everything like she’s never seen it before. The silence between them amplifies every creak of the floorboards.

“Um,” says Pike, too quietly. She nods once. Bending down, she fishes around in the cupboards for something familiar. After a few seconds, she pulls out a container, a dented tin. “Can I make some tea?”

 

-

 

(“Pawpaw?” Pike asks, eight years old and wiggling at her last baby tooth. Her words are muffled by her prying finger. “’M sorry.”

Her great-great-grandfather sighs. He looks up from where he’s kneading dough between his bony hands. “Don’t be sorry, Pike.”

“But I was bein’ bad.”

“You were being _young_ ,” he corrects. “Now, this is a bit too wet. Where did I put that flour?”

She pulls her finger from her mouth to point at the cupboard behind him.

“Thank you! I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She watches him pinch just enough out of the bag to dust the table. He stows it back in the cabinet when he’s done.

With hesitant guilt, she offers, “I can, um, try not being young anymore.”

He can’t stop himself from snorting. “Do that and we’ll have two old grumps in this house! I don’t think we have the room.” When she doesn’t smile, he sobers. “Oh, now.”

He wipes his palms on his shirt, leaving streaks of white, and brings himself in front of her. Sitting on the kitchen table as she is, he’s at the perfect height to rest his hands on the patched knees of her pants. He looks up into her face, and she stares back. She can see the wobble of her jaw reflected in his glasses.

“Why’d you say those things to nice Mrs. Cartwright? I thought you liked her.”

“I do!”

“But you didn’t want to stay with her.” He reaches up and pushes some unruly curls away from her cheek, dusting her brown skin with flour. “Why was that, huh?”

She glances away, feeling echoes of _uselessnogoodgirl_ swish around in her chest. Then she blurts: “You were gonna go to _Kymal._ ”

“What’s Kymal ever done to you? You seemed positively excited when we talked about their new temple of Pelor.” He pauses. “Ah. Was it maybe less of me _going_ and a little more of me _leaving_?”

Ashamed, she meets his eyes again. “Maybe that one.”

“I’m not your parents, young Pike.”

“I know that,” she says impatiently, “you’re _good_. But–” and here’s the crux of it– “if we said I can be good, too, and if I left JB, then that means good people can still leave people, and that means that one day you could still—”

“I could still leave you.”

She hangs her head.

He takes her tiny hand in his, squeezing it. With a seriousness he normally reserves for the temple, he says, “Pike Trickfoot, you listen good. You’re my pride and miracle. The Everlight blessed me with you—I will pray my thanks forever that I have you in my life. So believe me now when I swear this to you: it will take events far out of my control to make me ever, ever leave you.”

She blinks hard. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

She nods.

“Alright then.” He straightens, meandering back over to his dough. “Who wants to eat some honey buns?”

The guilt in her chest ebbs—she raises her hand with a small smile.

“Well, they’ll be a minute. Still need to put ‘em in the oven.” He starts tearing off little balls and sets them on a pan. “Now, where did I put that flour?”)

 

-

 

“Here,” says Pike, mopping a man’s brow with a damp cloth. “You’re gonna feel better soon, okay?”

The man in the bed nods, face hot and dry. He has a fever, but it’ll break soon enough. Pike had let her power trail through him, just enough to see how deep the pox had sunk its teeth into his body, and she knows he’s young and strong. All he needs from her is some care and bedrest. She sets down the cloth.

“Sleep now,” she murmurs. She presses two fingers to his neck and breathes as a dim golden light suffuses beneath his skin. His eyes flutter.

Pike walks to the corner to wash her hands in the purifying water. When her hands are dry, she moves on to the next bed.

She isn’t surprised she ended up at the hospital. It’s familiar. She knows its worn walls and broad windows and carefully wooded floors, the smell of tinctures and the swell of magic. She’d come here after the dragons, and she’d come here after Vecna, too. She _needs_ to be here, to heal others, because if she doesn’t–

Well, she just needs to.

The half-elf in this bed is a barmaid at the local tavern. She took a nasty fall while she was changing the thatching on her parent’s roof. Pike wishes she could say she recognizes her from her youthful drunken nights with Grog, but this girl is in her twenties—far too young.

Other healers at the hospital are worried the girl won’t make it through the night. She has a crackly lung and is bleeding out inside her skin, and all of them are too exhausted from a recent battle with the pox to have the strength to fix it. Pike, on the other hand, is overflowing with reserves.

She places a hand on the girl’s chest. Sarenrae, she invokes, and throws every ounce of warmth she has into her magic. She can see where her hand burns golden from behind her shut eyelids. The air heats around them and then there’s the _crack_ as ribs slot back into place, as her lungs reseal and her organs stop hemorrhaging.

The furrow in the barmaid’s brow smooths out, lapsing her from unconsciousness to real sleep. Pike sits back with a small smile. Her cheeks are now flushed.

“Every single time,” a rich voice from behind her says. “You impress me every single time.”

Pike turns, startled. She’s greeted by the sight of a dark-skinned human man in lavish silks. The man beams at her, warm and composed and elegant as a man beaming can be.

“Gilmore!” she says, and then she’s on her feet, letting herself be pulled into a tight hug. “Everlight, how have you been?”

Gilmore laughs. “Surely, my dear, you must know by now that I’m never anything less than wonderful.”

“Right.” She crinkles her nose happily. “It’s so good to see you.”

“I missed you too. Lords, though, that armor is _hard_.” He looks around and asks, “Are you almost done here? I’d hate to interrupt.”

Pike glances over the beds. There’s a Dwarvish boy with a badly broken leg two beds down, a human adult with a terrible rash in the bed across from her, and a half-orc woman tormented by horrible burns down the end. Margareta, the other healer on duty, has her hands full tending to a couple of local kids who thought it would be a good idea to taunt a bull.

“Ten more minutes?” she says apologetically. “Almost done, I swear.”

Gilmore shakes his head. “I’ll always wonder how we survive without you. Would you like help?”

There’s a moment when they both remember the last time he helped her in a hospital. She’d taught him how to assist in Whitestone, in the aftermath of dragons, with ash speckling their hair and bags beneath their eyes. He’d be a fair nurse still, if he remembers the things he’d done then.

“Would you like to help?” She sees the truth written all over his face. She grins. “Go on outside. I’ll be there quick, yeah?”

 _Thank you_ , he mouths, making his escape in a swish of cloaks.

Pike rolls her eyes. “Baby.”

Closer to fifteen minutes later—after the boy’s leg has _crunched_ back in place, after a magical ointment is applied up and down the rash, after the burns fade into pockmarks—Pike washes herself up and makes her way outside. She finds Gilmore draped over a nearby bench, globes of smoke spilling over his bottom lip.

“Bad for you, you know,” she says, out of habit.

Gilmore’s shoulders gracefully rise and fall. “What does it matter? I’m old.”

She looks him over. He’s gained more weight around his middle and at his neck. His temples are just greying, blushed over with silver like Grog’s beard, but his only wrinkles are crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. “Gilmore,” she says. “Aren’t you, like, fifty-five?”

“A man never tells,” he mourns.

Pike hops up on the bench and knocks him in the shoulder. “That’s really not old.”

“For you.”

She can’t help but smile. “For you, too!”

“Hmph.”

She raises her eyebrows at him.

His pout breaks and he smiles back. “I joke, of course. I was born to be a silver fox.”

She snorts.

There’s a pause, and then Gilmore asks, “How long have you been working?”

“Um, not long?”

It’s his turn to raise his brows.

“What?”

“No offense, my dear, but you look like you haven’t slept.”

Pike stops for a moment. Now that she thinks back, it was dusk when she went into the hospital; now, the sun’s beating down from overhead. Her back and feet ache something terrible.

“Um,” she says.

Gilmore sighs. “When was the last time you ate?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Pike…”

“I’m a grown woman, Gilmore, I can feed myself.” There’s a bit of a snap in the way she says that—she wouldn’t’ve expected nagging from _him_ of all people.

Something resigned flickers across his face. “Of course you can.” A pause. “They miss you at the temple, Pike.”

She hesitates. “Why?”

“You’re the next-of-kin,” he points out, “and you’re the Champion of the Everlight. They want your help with the preparations.”

“But I need to work here. There’s still more healing–”

“Which has gotten done without you for the past year. I’m sorry…this isn’t something that can be hidden from.” In a quieter voice, he continues, “I think you know that.”

Pike slumps, suddenly tired to the bone. She wipes a hand down the side of her face. “You’re right,” she apologizes. “Sorry for snapping at you. You’re right.”

“I tend to be.” He doesn’t sound like he’s bragging. More like…sad.

Oh. Sad is something Pike’s supposed to be feeling right now.

She mostly just feels numb.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she admits.

Gilmore wraps a long arm around her shoulders. “You can.”

She tries for a smile. “Thanks.”

“Go home,” he suggests. “Take a nap. Eat something. Take care of Grog. I am positive the temple will be able to fare without you until tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“Come,” he says, standing. “I trust I don’t need to carry you? I think your armor would make that quite difficult.”

She huffs and gets off the bench. “You know, I think your charm got worse with time.”

“You must be delirious with sleep deprivation. I’m as glorious as ever.” He reaches down to take her hand.

They walk home.

 

-

 

(“You’re here.” Grog looms in the doorway, standing with a confused look on his face.

Pike looks up from where she’s washing down the altar of healing. She grins before going back to her scrubbing. “I’m here. How are you?”

“M’okay.”

“Had a good day?”

He shrugs. “Learnt how to make a boot.”

“Really? That sounds very useful.”

“I s’pose.” Grog tries to seem humble about it, but his pride makes his chest swell, just a little. “I’m gonna make a pair with spikes on ‘em.”

“That’s great!” She smiles again. “You can come in, you know.”

Grog, sixteen and only recently adopted, stays hedged in the doorway. “You sure?”

Pike laughs. “Yeah, Grog, I’m sure. She accepts everyone.”

“Oh.” Grog nods and takes a few lumbering steps in. “Tha’s…nice.”

“Yeah. What d’you think of the temple? This is the first time….”

“Very fancy, like.” Grog nods dutifully. He looks around at the cramped room full of mismatched floormats and statues and worn tapestries. Then he frowns. “Sorry, but…what’s it for?”

“Oh!” Pike looks around, too. “It’s a place dedicated to Sarenrae.”

“The goddess lady you n’ the old man worship.”

“Right. So the temple’s for like, um, prayer and service and education.”

Grog looks around again with marginally more appreciation. “Looks good for priest stuff.”

Pike wipes the last bit of grime off of the altar. “ _Great_ for priest stuff.”

“Nice.” He flops down on the steps leading up to the dais, letting out a huff. “Buddy,” he says. “M’ bored.”

“Yeah?” She grins in sympathy, tucking the damp washcloth into a pocket of her tunic. She comes and sits down beside him. “What d’you wanna do?”

“D’you have anybody that y’ normally wrestle with?”

“What?”

“When you’re play-fighting, like.”

“Oh.” Pike pauses. “I don’t…I don’t normally do that.”

Grog’s eyes swell to the size of melons. “Whaddyou mean?”

Pike shrugs, feeling a little silly. “I haven’t wrestled since I came to Westruun.”

“You lived somewhere else before?”

Pike nods. “But I started living with Pawpaw when I was real little.”

She doesn’t say that none of the kids in Westruun have ever played near her. That they think she’s strange. That she spends most of her days at the temple, or doing chores, or in the hospital. She doesn’t say that her goddess—who is not her mother, not her friend, not her sister—knows her better than anyone alive.

“Oh.” Grog frowns. “Would you want me to teach ya?”

“You’d do that?”

“Sure. Don’t y’ go nuts, cooped up?”

 _Yes_. “I don’t know.” She brushes back her dark curls and looks up at him with eyes that are bigger than she means them to be.

He stands, puts a giant hand on her shoulder, and lifts her to her feet. “C’mon,” he encourages, guiding her out of the temple, “let’s go ‘ave a tumble.”)

 

-

 

It turns out, there’s a lot to do when someone dies. Pike spends the entire next day out at the temple, making funeral arrangements and preparing rituals. There are ointments to mix, prayers to chant, executors to fetch. People she’s known her entire life offer her condolence after condolence, and they deal enough sympathy and mournful looks that she wants to tear her hair out. If one more godsdamned person speaks to her in a half-whisper….

They let her see his body near midday.

He’s _small_.

His body is crumpled and laid out on the smooth stone of the altar, the wrinkles of his cheeks slack. There’s a grey pallor to his skin, though the acolytes have cast spells to reverse and halt the march of putrefaction; he looks like he could be asleep, if not for the crooked angles of his joints and the stillness of his torso. He wears a thin cotton robe. Blue dawn flowers are scattered across his chest and around the silhouette of his figure, and his eyelids and hands are coated in a golden ceremonial paste.

Age had made his limbs thin and sticklike, and had sucked the fat from between his ribs. He’s so frail that Pike, staring down at him, can’t breathe.

After a while—a long while—she manages to get down on her knees. She’s assumed this position thousands of times, in this very spot. This is different. Her knees grind through the stiff cloth of the ceremonial tunic, missing the metal kneecap normally protecting them from the ground. And when she reaches for the words, for the energy of mind she uses to pray, she can’t reach out to her goddess at all.

Instead:

_Hi, Vax._

Bring him back, she wants to scream at him. Bring him back like you all brought me back, like I brought all of you back, like the Raven Queen can and will when it suits her fancy. I fucking swear, I will charge into the undead kingdom and drag the both of you kicking and screaming—

She takes a deep breath.

 _Please take care of him_ , she prays instead. _For me. I miss the two of you so terribly, but I know that—_

_I know that—_

_I know that you’re both in a good place, even if it’s not the place I’d like you to be. I just…I hurt. I hurt so bad and I want it to stop before my hurt hurts anybody else._

_Anyway, sorry for being a bother. I love you, Stringbean. Tell Pawpaw I love him too._

She tries not to feel her throat choking up.

“Pike. _Pike_ ,” a voice calls. Another cleric stands in the doorway, one she’s met recently but can’t remember the name of. “Sorry to interrupt. There’s a woman here for you. Are you up for visitors?”

Pike, grateful to have a distraction, blinks her eyes open. “Keyleth?” she asks.

They shake their head. “Says her name is JB Trickfoot. A sister?”

Pike’s heart sinks. “Would you let her in?”

“Of course.” The cleric leaves, and Pike pushes herself to her feet.

A minute later, there’s a flash of black curls in the doorway. Blue eyes shine from an autumn-brown face, and loose, well-made clothes flutter as their wearer comes to a standstill. Pike inhales sharply.

“Hi, Pike,” says JB Trickfoot, stepping through into the temple.

Pike swallows. “Hi, JB. How are you?”

JB has matured, filled out. Half-moon glasses hang around her neck on a copper chain, and her eyes are creased with the slightest of wrinkles from all her hours of reading. Her skin is several shades lighter than Pike’s—she doesn’t really enjoy the outdoors—but she’s wearing boots that are meant for traveling the road. The sight of her makes Pike’s chest fill with warmth. Her stomach, though, flips uncomfortably.

“I’m fine,” JB says. Her voice is less nervous, these days. Ogden hasn’t been around to make her nervous for years. “How are you?”

“Fine!” Pike replies. “Come on in, sit down. You must be tired, you came all that way.”

“Yes, I’m tired,” says JB, bluntly but not rudely. She moves further into the temple and spots the altar. She blanches. “Is that…?”

Pike nods. “We’re preparing him for the funeral.”

JB walks over, eyes wide. She runs a few fingers over his cold arm. “I don’t think I thought he could ever die.”

“Well,” Pike says, smiling half-heartedly, “it took him a while. Stubborn old man.” The almost-joke fails as her voice cracks. She reaches up to scrub away a tear that threatens to fall.

JB turns to her and frowns. “You’re upset,” she murmurs. She crosses to Pike and wraps her arms around her. “Of course you are.”

Pike blinks in surprise. JB smells like sweat, mothballs, and cats. “You don’t like hugs,” she says stupidly.

“I don’t,” agrees JB. “But you need one, don’t you?”

“I–” Pike gives up on trying to deny it. It’s an odd feeling, JB trying to take care of her, but it’s not a bad one. They break apart, and she offers her cousin a small smile. “Can I get you anything? Water? Food?”

“Can we go back to the house? Benny is waiting with the cart.”

Benny is JB’s partner. None of Vox Machina have ever figured out if it’s a romantic, sexual, or purely platonic relationship, but he and JB love each other, somehow. They live together in a sweet little house in Whitestone, where JB has easy access to her job as Head Bookkeeper of both the city’s archives and of the de Rolo family collection. Last time Pike visited their place, she could hardly find the guest bedroom under all of the old tomes.

“Sure,” she says, “let’s go help him out.”

Before they go, Pike stops to check in with the cleric whose name she still can’t remember. The cleric tells her that there’s nothing left to do but the ritual prayers, and those can be recited throughout the next few days. She’s free to go for now. They remind her that the funeral is set for four days in the future. Pike says thank you for everything, see you tomorrow, and then sets off through town with JB.

They make good time towards the house, and get there just in time to see Grog and Keyleth lift the last of the items out of the little caravan. A mule scuffs his hooves, still tethered, obviously waiting to be rewarded. Benny, a round-bellied, pale Halfling, waves at their approach.

“Hi, Ben,” says JB loudly. Instead of looking at him, she moves towards the mule and starts to unhitch the leather ties.

“Howdy,” Benny calls, grinning. “Hey, Pike.”

“Good to see you, Benny.” They hug in the brisk, casual way of in-laws.

“How was the temple?” Keyleth asks, leading the way up the stepping stone path.

“Fine,” says Pike, following. She opens the door for her, stepping aside to let her, Grog, and Benny in with their variety of goods. “We were just getting everything sorted out for the ceremonies and the funeral.”

“Oh, uh, if it’s alright,” says Grog, “I wanna dig the grave.”

“Why?” JB asks, her face screwed up.

“Of course, you can dig the grave, buddy,” Pike answers. She files into the entryway with the rest of them, closing the door behind her. “JB, Benny, you’ll be staying upstairs, if that’s alright? The ceilings are a little low up there for everybody else.”

“Sounds great,” says Benny.

JB nods. “Sure, Pike.”

Pike gets them set up in her childhood bedroom. She’d made the bed that morning, stripping the sheets and replacing them, fluffing the pillows and opening the window to let in some air. Some of her old things are still there, gathering dust—most of them are trinkets from before Grog came, because after that she tended to curl up with him downstairs. A pop-up altar sits in the corner, some candles half-melted on her bedside table. A painting that Grog made for her hangs on the wall. And peeking out from beneath the bed, a little red box calls her attention.

Automatically, Pike kneels down to grab it. JB inspects it curiously.

“What’s in it?” JB asks.

Pike peels off the lid and takes out two things—a shirt, delicate and moth-eaten from age, and a copper-wire bracelet, beaded with some cheap stones. Both are made in miniature, gnome child-sized. Wordlessly, she passes them to JB, who inhales sharply.

“You kept them?”

Pike shrugs. “When I was young I wanted to throw them away, but they were all I had from…before. Pawpaw made me keep them.” She forces herself to smile gently. “Now I’m glad I did.”

“I made you this,” says JB, twisting the bracelet in one hand.

“You did.”

“I wish I could have come with you,” JB blurts, “and grown up with him in this house.”

Pike nods, biting her lip. “Me too.” She offers her hand, palm up, and to her relief JB takes it. “You deserved better than you got, remember?”

JB squeezes. “I remember.”

Pike looks at Benny, standing back at a polite distance, and smiles at him. “The two of you always have a home here. I hope you know that.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs. He looks at JB with a wonderfully full look in his eyes, like he would hang the moons for her.

“I’ll let you two get settled in,” says Pike. She lets go of JB’s hand after one last squeeze and leaves them the bedroom.

Out in the hallway, her polite facade drops. She slumps against the wall, wiping a hand down her face. She’s equal parts overwhelmed and grateful; hosting is a herculean task, but she knows how to be useful. She knows how to help, to serve, to smile and comfort and take care of other people. It’s much better than feeling useless.

Pike can hear Keyleth and Grog moving around downstairs. Gilmore’s voice drifts up from the kitchen, where banging pots and pans clue her into his attempts to cook the evening meal. With a deep breath, she steels herself. She dons her capable, motherly demeanor.

When she makes her way down to the kitchen, spotting Gilmore in a purple apron and Keyleth nervously tasting some sauce, she puts her hands on her hips.

“How can I help?”

 

-

 

(The first few weeks that Pike stays with her great-great-grandfather, she’s small and grubby and tearful. JB is never more than a half-step from her mind; the two had never been apart for more than a night, and now Pike’s side feels permanently naked. During the day, she trails behind her grandfather’s every move. At night, she writhes with dreams. She feels so out of place in this world, in this Westruun.

She doesn’t know how to set a table for a meal. She hardly knows how to eat a meal with utensils—when they were traveling, Ogden had always gotten them food that could be swiped between their fingers. She doesn’t know how to wake up every morning in the same bed, or even a bed at all. She feels stupid and useless and _wrong_.

The kids in town stare at her and don’t approach. Pike doesn’t want them to. The last time the Trickfoot children tried to play in a park, they ended up with dirt in their eyes and jeering at their backs.

Frankly, Pike’s miserable.

She remembers that, years later, when she joins up with the S.H.I.T.S. for the first time. When Grog goes missing, when Pike’s heart nearly hammers out of her chest, when she feels so out of place among these ragtag adventurers and heroes—she fluffs her bedroll, adjusting her shoulder against the hard-packed dirt, and thinks, _even living with Pawpaw sucked at the beginning._

It’s odd, how taking the road again is just as uncomfortable as leaving it was.

Things get better, though. Of course they do.

They find Grog and bring him home. They find Percy, bloody and broken and a clawing mess of a boy, and Pike will sew him back together if it kills her. They give themselves a new name and they kill dragons and Pike dies but she comes back, so it’s okay, really. And sometimes she still feels stupid or useless or _wrong_ , but at least she’s not alone.

Just like living with in Westruun became normal, became happy—being part of Vox Machina becomes happy too.)

 

-

 

Originally, Pike means to sleep with Grog, but he quickly proves too restless to be a good bedmate. Instead, Pike spends the night with Keyleth again, the two of them curled up in the old guest room. The cushier bedding is a blessing for her sore back.

They stay in silence for a while, listening to the chirp of the crickets. To Pike, this intimacy is almost nostalgic: the two of them are an _almost_ , an _almost_ that sits in Pike’s chest and pools around her ribs. It attunes her to Keyleth’s breathing, her shifts and her warmth.

That’s how she knows that the question lingers around Keyleth’s lips for a few long, drawn-out minutes before she captures it. “Pike?”

Pike opens her eyes.

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you want us to know?”

“What?”

Keyleth shifts. “About the funeral. Why didn’t you want Vox Machina to come?”

Oh.

Pike rolls onto her back. She stares at the shadowed ceiling.

She has hundreds of answers she could give—she didn’t want to be stifled, she wanted time with just Grog, she needed space—and a hundred more beyond those—she couldn’t be a bother, she didn’t want to be fussed over, she didn’t want any of it to be _real_. None fit as well on her tongue as they should. Finally, she lands on:

“We’ve all done so much mourning already. I…I couldn’t ask you—any of you—to do more.”

A raven-shaped ghost slips between them, then, black as pitch and heavy as a cloak. The air seems to cool. Keyleth’s brow furrows and her mouth puckers. She swallows.

“I…” She sighs. “Pike, this is—this is different. He was your grandfather, yours and Grog’s, and we…. The rest of us loved him, of course we did, but not how you did, you know? If we went to the funeral, it wouldn’t be piling more grief on top of us; it would be more like letting us support you. Letting us hold you up, as you’ve done countless times for us. Deal with the bullshit together! That’s something that we’d be more than happy to do.

“Obviously,” Keyleth goes on, because her penchant for babbling has mostly subsided but it’s late and she’s tired and it’s _Pike_ , “if you and Grog wanted to go alone, we wouldn’t want to intrude, or anything. I know how grieving can be overwhelming, especially when there are so many people crowding around trying to make you feel better when you’re not ready to feel better at all, but….”

Pike’s throat aches. She glances to the side and is caught in Keyleth’s eyes, earnestly creased at the corners. The woman’s face is limned in the meek light, half-holy, and Pike has felt holy before but she’s not feeling holy now, she feels cold, she feels _empty_.

She feels like she’s floating and heavy all at once.

“Did you really scry on us?” she asks, quiet. “While we crossed the mountains.”

“Not at first,” Keyleth admits. “Scanlan sent me a message. He’s worried about you.”

“Oh.” She thinks of Scanlan, his scruff a little thicker, his smile just as wide. She thinks about his hands, curling into her hair; she thinks about his mouth on her lips and on her neck. She thinks about her knuckles breaking one of his teeth last year, when he’d been shaking her awake from a night terror, and the kind patience he’d had to coax her back to reality with his gums still bleeding. She thinks of what she’d written in her letter: _give Kaylie my love, and take your time with her. Grog and I’ll be alright on our own_.

That must have stung, she realizes.

She misses him, she realizes.

(She misses all of them, she realizes.)

“For what it’s worth,” Keyleth says, laying a slender hand on her back, “I don’t think the old man would have wanted you to be alone.”

Pike bites her trembling lip and nods.

 

-

 

(The day the twins are born, Pike makes sure to be there. She’s missed so much, over the years, deaths and defeats and triumphs and celebrations. She’s sworn to herself and to her friends that she won’t miss any more milestones.

Vex looks beautiful, lying in bed. Her belly is swollen and tight, her brown cheeks rosy and warm. She’s been in labor for hours now, and dirt still clings to the bottoms of her feet from her long, calming stroll through the gardens. Pike is playing the part of midwife again, like she did for Elaina’s birth. (It’s an odd change from a battlefield medic—she’s bringing _new_ life into the world. Can you imagine?) She’s making sure that Vex is comfortable. Percy paces beside them, running his hand through his hair enough that it sticks up in funny directions. Pike keeps shooting him looks.

Eventually, each contraction lasts about a minute and a half, with gaps of only a minute or two between them. Vex pants and moans, face twisted in pain for the first time since the birth began. Shivers wrack her body despite the summer warmth.

“You’re doing great,” Pike murmurs, gripping Vex’s hand. “You’re doing so good. Breathe in—yeah, just like that—now let’s breathe out. Yeah. See?”

“Is everything alright?” Percy asks. He hovers over them, watching anxiously.

“Darling, if you ask that one more time,” Vex gasps, “I’m going to choke you to death with their navel cords.”

“I’ll help,” jokes Pike.

Vex doesn’t react, caught up in the swell of another contraction, but Percy’s ears go bright red and he steps back.

Good.

“You’re doing great, mama.” Pike wipes Vex’s forehead with a wet cloth. She breathes in and out again, exaggerated, to let Vex match her rhythm.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Vex swears. Sweat drips down her temples. She says something in Elvish that sounds terribly inappropriate. She repeats it in Common; it’s enough to make a sailor blush. “I want these things _out_ , I _hate_ them—”

“Hate them all you want,” says Pike.

Percy makes a strangled sound, but wisely keeps his mouth shut.

After about half an hour, the cervix has properly dilated. “Vex,” Pike says, “you’re gonna need to push real soon. Is your body telling you to do that yet?”

Vex nods, tears streaked down her face. “But it _hurts_.”

“Okay, that’s okay. Why don’t we get you up and you can squat for a little bit? That should help speed things along.”

They position Vex on the floor; she ends up squatting, then on her side, then back on the bed, then on all fours. Hours pass, long minutes spent pushing and screaming and encouraging. Finally, Pike spots a head.

“Almost there,” she promises.

Vex grimaces through her exhaustion. “Is he as big-headed as his father?”

Pike grins. “Let’s find out.”

Wails erupt, from both mother and child, and Pike picks up the knife beside her. She calls for Keyleth and hands the first baby off to her to be cleaned and appraised. Vex nearly passes out from pain, but Pike—who has been subtly feeding her healing magic throughout the ordeal—sends more of her power into her friend. Vex blinks, momentarily revitalized. They redouble their efforts.

The second infant emerges, squalling, and again Pike nicks their cord and passes them on, this time to Percy. Vex exhales, ready to relax, but Pike pushes more magic into her.

“Not yet, remember?”

Vex glares at her like she’s a fiend from the Underdark, but she keeps pushing. They deliver the placenta and Vex lies back, utterly spent. Pike slips her a small spell to help her sleep. As Vex’s eyelids flutter, Pike takes a minute to gasp herself. She’s been going nonstop for ten hours, feeding Vex as much energy as she can spare. But they did it, they’re _done_ , and pride swells up in her chest.

After a few minutes of making sure that Vex doesn’t have any complications, she makes her way outside. Keyleth sits in a chair in the corridor, holding a red-faced, swaddled baby in her arms. Percy stands beside her, leaning his lanky body against the armrest. He clutches his other child close to his chest. He’s staring at his kids with such full-eyed, terrified wonder that Pike worries his heart will give out.

Both of them look to her when she steps out of the room.

“She’s alright,” Pike assures. “She did really well.”

Keyleth smiles. Percy wipes a tear from his cheek.

“Now, who do we have here?” Pike strides closer, craning her neck to see each of the infants.

“This is Johanna Zahra de Rolo II.” Percy beams. His glasses are crooked, and his hair still sticks up funny. “And Keyleth’s holding Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo IV.”

Pike’s stomach soars. “Big name for a little boy.”

Percy nods. “We were considering nicknaming him Freddie, but….”

“It hurts,” explains Keyleth.

“We knew it would,” says Percy, “but it’s…I don’t know that I can articulate how I feel about it. I think at the moment…I’m inclined to call him Ricky.”

“Ricky and Johanna.” Pike grins. She stares at the red-skinned, wrinkled, slit-eyed bundles, which only moments ago had been screaming bloody murder. “Well,” she says honestly, “they’re both stunning.”

“They are,” says Percy, his eyes spilling more tears, “aren’t they?”)

 

-

 

To an outside observer, Vex’ahlia and Percival de Rolo would look fantastically out of place trailing Keyleth up the house’s crooked front path. Their clothing costs maybe a gold piece a square inch, richly sewn out of high-quality cloth and colored in subtle but expensive dyes. Immaculate tufts of fur trim each of their leather boots, clearly layered with dirt-repellent charms. The angles of their chins speak of power.

Behind them, three children attempt to emulate their confident strides. The oldest girl, her dark hair twisted into a simple plait down her back, manages quite well. Her siblings, a girl with brutally short-cropped hair and a boy with his long hair loose, shove each other with a frequency a little too recurrent to be called dignified.              

“Welcome!” Benny calls. “Come in, come on in.”

“Thank you,” says Vex, sweeping past him into the humble entry-way. She glances around until her eyes land on Pike, standing with a feather-duster in her hand. “ _Darling_ ,” she murmurs, and kneels down to gather her in a tight embrace.

Pike drops the feather duster and wraps her arms around Vex’s neck in return, pressing her face into her shoulder. She breathes in the smell of bear fur and the Sun Tree.

“Oh, um, uh,” she stammers, “hi.”

“Hi,” Vex says back, her voice kind and clear, like warm water lapping at a child’s ankles. “I’ve missed you—all the way in _Vasselheim_. I’m glad you’re back home.”

“She enjoys the pretense that it doesn’t take the same amount of time to travel everywhere that Keyleth brings us,” fills in Percy. He looks well. Even the silver that blushes at the temples of his white hair suits him. “It is good to see you, though, Pike. We wish it were under better circumstances.”

Vex leans back and nods.

Pike wipes her forehead and stares at them. “It’s alright,” she says, which it basically is—she’s all processed out, can’t fit a single more emotion into her head. “It’s good to see you guys too.”

Percy nods at JB and Benny, who linger awkwardly in the doorway. “JB,” he says. “Benny.”

“Lord Percy,” says JB. Beside her, Benny does a happy little half-bow. “Lady Vex’ahlia. An honor as always.”

“Same to you.”

There’s a pause.

“Auntie Pike?” Cautiously, the eldest of the de Rolo children walks out from behind her parents. “Hi.”

“Elaina,” Pike murmurs. She rises up on tiptoes to give the girl a tight hug, running her hand from the back of her head down her long braid. If any of the adults in the room notice that the hug lasts longer than it possibly needs to, they tactfully choose to look away. When Pike pulls back, her voice is hoarse. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Auntie. How are…”

Pike laughs once and gives her head a little sideways headshake. “Don’t worry about me, baby.”

Emboldened by their sister’s approach, the twins edge out from behind their parents.

“Ricky? Jo?” Pike’s eyes widen comically. “Everlight, look how big you’ve gotten. You’re nearly taller than me!”

There’s a brief hesitation across the room as everyone registers what she’s said: the twins have been taller than Pike for a good five years now. As they spot the teasing twinkle in her eye, Vex and Percy share a relieved chuckle.

“Hullo, Auntie,” says Ricky. His voice is uncertain, stiff. He fiddles with his glasses.

“C’mere.” Pike takes a step toward him, giving him a quick hug. “Keeping up with your studies?”

“Will he ever keep _away_ from them?” interjects Jo, looking beleaguered.

Pike grins. “If it hasn’t killed your dad, I doubt it’s gonna kill him.” She looks back up at Ricky. “We should get you something to eat, though. You’re skin and bones.”

The boy rolls his eyes and blushes.

“Now me,” pushes Jo. “I missed you, Auntie Pike.”

“Aw,” says Pike, sweeping Jo off her feet and spinning her. When she sets her down, she reaches up and knuckles the top of her shorn head. “I missed you too, spitfire. How many bruises right now?”

Jo glances down at her legs, which are bared out of respect for the Westruun warmth. Contusions, scabs, and scrapes dapple the dark skin. “You think I can count that high?”

Pike shakes her head fondly. “And where are Colahn and baby Maddy?”

“With Auntie Cass,” Vex explains. “They’ve probably learned to run the whole castle by now.”

Percy clears his throat. “Yes, er, Cassandra sends her love and sympathies.”

“Oh, tell her thank you. Let’s get out of the hallway, huh? Here we go…” Pike leads everyone into the kitchen, having already pulled out some spare chairs after Keyleth went out to pick them up. They’re still one seat short, so she sits and pulls Jo into her lap. “You’re with me.”

Jo, taller in the torso as Pike, shifts to sit sidesaddle so she’s not blocking her aunt’s view. Pike presses a kiss to her temple. Across the room, Benny fusses with the kettle while JB picks out some biscuits and sets them in the middle of the table.

“Can we help with anything?” Vex asks politely. Benny waves her away.

“Grog should be back soon,” says Keyleth. “He’ll be happy you’ve come.”

“See, Jo? I told you Uncle Grog would be here.”

“ _Dad_ ,” Jo hisses.

Keyleth giggles.

Pike rubs a circle on Jo’s arm. “It’s okay! Of course, Uncle Grog’ll be here. He’s just gone to the cemetery.”

“Oh.”

“He’s checking out the plot for the grave,” Pike explains to Vex and Percy. “Did Keyleth tell you? The funeral’s in three days.”

“She told us. Could we be of service in any way? Oh, thank you, Benny.” Percy lifts his teacup and takes a dainty sip.

“I might steal your wife for some of the rituals—” she winks at Vex, who smiles— “but I’ll let you know if something else comes up.”

Percy nods. “Do you have room for us to all stay? We don’t wish to impose—we can of course rent a room at the inn.”

“I’m sure we can make room—”

“Actually, Percy,” Keyleth interrupts, “I think that’s a good idea.”

Vex pipes up, “I agree. Pike, dear, we love you and your hospitality, but we’re five people and this house is built for gnomes. For the sake of the top of Percy’s head, we should give you some room to breathe.”

“Right.” Pike doesn’t even know where she thought they all would fit. “Yeah, okay.” With a brave smile, she adds, “Thank you all for coming, though. It means a lot.”

Jo turns her face over Pike’s shoulder, hugging her tight. The adults lapse into silence.

“We should probably go check into the inn,” Vex says eventually. “We’ll come join you for supper, if that’s alright?”

“I’d love that,” says Pike. She gives Jo a last squeeze and releases her.

Keyleth glances at Vex and silently communicates something that Pike is too weary to interpret.

“We’ll be bringing dinner over from town,” Vex pronounces. “Don’t worry, we’ll get plenty.

And don’t argue,” she adds, seeing Pike and JB open their mouths, “it’s no bother.”

“You sure?”

Vex comes around to give Pike a goodbye hug. “Positively, darling.”

Pike crushes her tight in return, releasing her as she exhales. “Okay. Go say hello to Gilmore, won’t you? He’s been a blessing these last couple days.”

“Will do,” Percy promises.

With some final goodbyes, the de Rolo clan files back out of the house.

Sighing, Pike sits back in her seat.

“You look like you could use a nap, babe,” says Keyleth. Her forehead wrinkles in concern. “Why don’t you go into our room for a bit?”

“No,” Pike demurs. “I need to go find Grog. Jo wants to see him.”

“He’ll come back on his own–”

“ _I_ want to see him, too.”

“Alright.” Keyleth brushes back a couple stray curls. “I’ll, uh, go get Scanlan, if that’s fine? We’ll wait here till you get back.”

“That’d be great.” Pike’s voice cracks. “Keyleth….”

“What?”

Pike shakes her head. “Never mind. See you in a bit, alright?”

“Love you, Pike.”

“Love you.”

 

-

 

_(Strike._

_Strike. Parry. Strike. Duck. Recover. Strike._

Pike’s muscles blaze with the exertion as she repeats the form again and again. Her mace flashes silver as it pounds into her opponent. Chunks of straw drop from their disemboweled organs, until they litter the sandy floor around her feet.

_Strike._

_Strike. Parry. Strike. Duck. Recover. Strike._

“C’n I join?” rumbles a voice.

Pausing, her mace coming to rest in the dust by her boots, Pike glances up at the entrance to the training arena. Grog stands at the edge of the open-air pit, the sky blooming pink behind his bulky silhouette.

“I’m, uh, not really in the mood for company,” Pike replies.

“Yeah?” Grog frowns. He starts down the steps. “Huh.”

“Grog–”

“’Re you arguin’ with me?”

Pike sighs and hefts her mace back into form. “Yes.”

“Too bad.”

“Fuck off.”

Grog raises his eyebrows. “No, y’know, I don’ think I will.”

 _Clang._ Swinging her mace with all her might, Pike manages to bend the top half of the dummy’s metal spine to a hundred-ten-degree angle.

“Wanna take on somebody who c’n hit back?”

“Fine,” she snaps, acting like a child, like a brat; she’s being immature, but she can’t stop, can’t swallow down the anger and frustration and restless claustrophobia filling every pore of her body. She steps away from the row of dummies, closer to where Grog stands in the center of the arena.

“Jus’ like the Crucible,” Grog says, baring his teeth in a grin.

His smile burrows its way through the roof of Pike’s mouth, reaching her brain squeezing her head too tight. Suddenly, she can’t stand him. In the way that families hate each other after too long in close proximity, she hates her brother then.

She attacks.

He defends, and then attacks, and she defends, and then attacks. He doesn’t rage. She clamps down on her magic. Sweat drips into her eyes.

On his breast, she manages to lay a wicked blow that digs the sharp ends of her mace into his skin until she yanks them back out again. Scarlet drips into the sand, clumping it together. Her ribs ache with one of the blows his hammer lands on her, her back with another. Her ears ring from an impact to the side of her head.

Dusk sets in, their impossibly long shadows shuffling back and forth on the ground, tangling together.

Finally, exhausted, she drops her mace.

“You win,” she says. The situation really does parallel the Crucible—except this time she’s not grinning as she cedes, and her heart’s not full of pride.

Grog nods, setting down his practice hammer and falling to a seat in the dirt. She moves to him on instinct, pressing her fingers to his wounds and casting a healing spell.

“Y’ should fix y’self up,” he advises.

She does. When the harsh pain fades, she almost wishes for it back.

Grog pats the ground beside him. She sits, tucking herself into his side. He puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Heard you an’ Scanlan going at it,” he says. “Going at it in the fightin’ way, I mean.”

“Mm,” she says.

“Do I need t’ beat him up for you?”

She shakes her head.

“Sure?”

Her breath stutters as she draws it in. Inhale—catch, catch, catch. Her eyes sting.

The last rays of the sun throw themselves over the edges of the arena, golden and dying. The moons have crested over the horizon. Crickets chirp from the fields between them and Whitestone. Water runs over Pike’s dark cheek.

“Oh, buddy,” Grog says. He squeezes her in his grip.

“He’s just—He’s just such a fucking _asshole_.”

“Well, we knew that.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m just so,” her voice cracks, “stupid.”

“Hey.” He scoops her up in two hands, moving her so she settles on his slightly bent knees, facing him. Under his scrutiny, she can’t hide the tears running thicker. He wipes at them. “None o’ that, yeah?”

She nods, her lip wobbling. “He just—He keeps going places without telling me where he’s going. Then he’ll come back days later and not tell me _why_ or say _sorry_ or…and then he gets mad when I ask and it’s like—” She swallows.

“Oh. Well, I can have a go at ‘im if you like. Give him what for, n’ everything.”

She shakes her head.

“Why not?”

“’Cause that’s not the kind of hurt it is, Grog.”

“Oh. Have you told ‘im you feel like this?”

She shrugs.

“Y’ love him, righ’? That’s why you hurt so bad.”

She stares hard at his chest. “No.”

“Yes, y’ do.”

“No.”

“Stubborn as a mule.” He thumps her forehead lightly. “I don’t know a whole lot, but you’ve taught me that we should talk to people. ‘Specially if we love them.”

“But I don’t want to love someone who _leaves!”_

Grog pauses. “Why don’t we just sit, yeah? Just us two. We c’n talk about Scanlan in the morning, when you’re all forgiving n’ shit.”

Pike sniffs. “But I’m mad.”

“Then shit, buddy, be mad.”

“Oh.” She pauses. “Okay.”)

 

-

 

She finds her brother in the cemetery. Even bent at the waist, he stands taller than most of the headstones. His massive back bobs up and down over the grassy knolls and mossy marble.

Picking her way through the graves, feet flattening the springy grass and crunching on freshly turned dirt, she makes her way towards him. She pulls up short two feet to Grog’s left, beside the plot that their great-great-grandfather chose for himself decades ago. A gentle decorative stream babbles three plots down. Bare stretches of meadow span between the closest graves—her Pawpaw had saved plots for Pike and Grog, too, just in case they wanted them. The empty space on the right side holds the beginnings of a mound of dirt.

“Buddy,” she says.

Grog doesn’t look at her. The shovel in his hand digs in and out, in and out, lodging deep into the ground and then unearthing a huge clump that he levers up onto the grass. Still shallow, the hole has rough and uneven sides. Its circumference is small, small enough that Pike could comfortably lay down in it with only an inch all around her to spare.

Fuck _._

Without bothering to say anything else, Pike drops her rucksack to the ground. She pulls out the rusted shovel from the backyard shed and steps into the hole. Thrusting the metal tip into the ground, she stomps on the heel of the spade. In only minutes, sweat soaks through the neck of her sky-blue tunic.

For a while, the only sounds come from dirt and metal and breathing.

Eventually, Grog grunts: “Don’t wanna be buried.”

Pike pauses. She wipes her brow, glancing up at him.

He doesn’t go on.

They keep digging.

Eventually, Pike replies: “Me neither.”

More digging. Pike’s knees are level with the grass around her.

“I’m gonna die in battle,” says Grog.  

Pike nods. “I know.”

Dirt. Metal. Breathing.

“I want to be cremated. Burned to ash.” Pike scoops up a particularly ambitious shovelful. Her shoulders ache. “After the rituals. Taken out on _The_ _Broken Howl_ , dumped off her stern into the open ocean.”

“A nice sign-thingy, maybe? Back here, for the flowers.”

“I like that,” Pike agrees. “A nice simple plaque.”

“I want a statue. C’n I have a statue?”

“I promise,” Pike swears. “I’ll build you a statue, with huge muscles and the biggest beard a goliath ever had.”

“Mm,” Grog approves.

“Grog?”

He finally looks at her, his shovel propped on his shoulder.

“Talk to me?”

Grog just stands there. Deep circles line his wrinkled, bloodshot eyes. Finally, cracking, breaking: “His body’s so _little_.”

Pike’s nose burns. She purses her lips and nods.

“Everythin’ hurts, buddy. I just want to dig until I can’t ‘member anything.”

Pike sets her shoulders. She tries not to shatter. “Then let’s dig.”

 

-

 

(“I love you,” Scanlan murmurs. He kisses her forehead, her hose, her neck, her chest. “I _adore_ you.”

Pike giggles. She lets his hands explore, unstrapping each piece of armor as he finds the clasps.

“You’re so very incredible,” he breathes. “One of the great injustices of the world is that not enough people have told you that in your lifetime. People should be shouting it from the rooftops— _Pike Trickfoot is so very incredible!”_

“Maybe they are,” she suggests wryly.

“Well, I am,” he agrees. “ _PIKE TRICKFOOT IS SO VERY INCREDIBLE!”_

“Shh, shh,” she demands, giggling more. “You’ll wake up the neighbors, asshole!”

“So what? They, too, should know how much I love and _adore_ you—”

“Stop!” She flushes. “Why don’t you make your mouth do something more useful for a change?”

“Are you saying….”

“Yes,” she says, emphatic. “With the tongue circles, okay? That was good last time.”

He grins. “What my lady desires is my command.”

After, when they’re both hot and sweaty and sated, they lay back again against Scanlan’s bright purple sheets.

“I was thinking,” says Scanlan. He rolls so they’re propped up on their sides, facing each other on the bed.

 _Oh really?_ Pike wants to say, but she can sense something’s coming.

“I was considering….” He trails off. “I was considering asking your grandfather for his blessing. For if I ever got up the guts to bid for your hand.” He smiles nervously, toothy in the dark. “But I wanted to ask—if I did ask, what would you say?”

“Are you…pre-proposing to me?”

“More like…testing the waters.”

“Scanlan….” Pike sighs. “Ask me later,” she says. “When we didn’t almost just die.”

“Pike, I’ve loved you for eons. And we _always_ almost just died. I can wait,” he moves his hands in a placating gesture, “but don’t think I’ll stop wanting to any time soon.”

“Still.” She nods. “Ask later. I don’t…I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

“So your answer is…maybe?”

She nods. “Yeah.” She smiles. “Later.”

“Later?” Scanlan grins back. “I can live with that.”)

 

-

 

“Keyleth? We’re back–”

“Honey,” says a familiar gnome, waggling his fingers, “I’m home.”

“ _Scanlan_.” Pike rushes through the kitchen, launching herself into his arms. He staggers backwards, holding her with the little scrawn he has.

“Pikey-poo,” he greets, half-teasing, half-somber. “We were just talking about you.”

“You were?” She’s so lost in his smell, his solidity, his traveling robes and his scraggly chin.

“Mm,” he answers. He breathes in her ear, “I missed you.”

“Me too,” she says. She can’t let him go, she’s sagging against him, there’s a tension in her shoulders that’s releasing. “I’m sorry about what I said, I’m sorry, I just–”

“Shhh,” he hums. “All is forgiven.”

Keyleth and JB awkwardly sip at their tea while Grog awkwardly hunkers in the doorway. Scanlan and Pike keep hugging like it’s the end of times.

When Pike starts to feel embarrassingly shaky, she takes a step back and unwraps herself.

“Now, uh,” says Scanlan. “Not that I’m not loving the look, honey, but why are you covered in dirt?”

“We were at the cemetery.” She looks to Grog. “The funeral’s in three days.”

“Right.” Scanlan’s normal cheer fades.

“Vex and Percy and the kids are coming for dinner,” says Keyleth.

Scanlan nods in a way that means this isn’t new information—this is being reiterated for Pike’s benefit. She’s annoyed to the point that she’s grateful, because she’d honestly forgotten.

“What are we making?” she asks, brushing her hands together in a businesslike way. “We can whip up some pots, I think we’ve got the ingredients for stew if I run down to the store—”

“They said they’d bring something,” reminds Keyleth.

Pike freezes. “Oh. Well, they shouldn’t have to do that, they’re still settling in….”

“They’ve got it, Pike.” Keyleth’s slender arms fold as she leans her elbows down on the table. “Why don’t you go take a nap?”

“Why are you so obsessed with me taking naps?” Pike snaps.

“I don’t know.” Scanlan yawns. “I’ve been on the road for a couple days; a nap doesn’t sound too bad.” He raises an eyebrow. “Unless you’d rather me faint away on my feet?”

“I know what you’re doing,” she grumbles, yawning against her own will. But she allows him to draw her from the kitchen, much to Keyleth’s obvious relief. She hears her asking, “So, uh, how’re you, Grog?” and feels blessed that she doesn’t need to bear witness to the exchange.

Scanlan leads her into the guest room she’d shared with Keyleth the night before. Flopping dramatically back on the bed, he stares up at her. “Aren’t you gonna join me?”

Pike peels off her muddy leggings and tunic. In only her underthings, she slips under the sheets beside him. He half-rolls, still on top of the covers, to look at her. Loose brown strands of hair escape the simple knot he’s tied with twine at the back of his head, framing his honey-brown cheeks. His facial hair, scruffier than his usual style, shines in that oily, not-recently-groomed way. He smiles a crooked, sad smile.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hi,” she murmurs.

“I rather thought you might hate me.”

She shakes her head. “No.” Her cheeks squish into the pillow. “Just…just didn’t know how to feel. About everything.”

“That’s alright. I feel like you’re fairly allowed, you know. Comes with the territory.”

“Yeah.” She yawns again. “I’m so tired, Scanlan.”

“Then how about we sleep?”

“No.” Even as she says it, tears of exhaustion spring to her eyes. They glint in the golden afternoon light let in by the far window. “Why did we go to Vasselheim?”

“Because we wanted to. Because you were given an incredible opportunity, and Wil– your grandfather wanted you to go, too.”

“But I _knew_ this would happen!” Her bottom lip wobbles in the worst way she could imagine, and she feels too hot and trapped and there’s something like bile but also like shame bubbling up in her throat. “I knew it would.”

“Of course you did. He was a very old man.” He brushes a hand over her sweaty curls. “He lived good and long. Now he’s done.”

“You were gonna– You were gonna ask him for his, his,” she sucks in three staccato breaths, “blessing. So we could get married…”

“I was,” Scanlan agrees. “But if I ask you, I’ll make sure to pray very hard to him and Sarenrae and Ioun first, okay? I’ll get us a blessing, you have my word.”

“But I wanted him _there_ —”

“Shhh.” Scanlan shakes his head. “Let’s not talk about this now, alright? Let’s lie here.” He reaches out and draws her closer to him, she still under the sheets, he above them. She doesn’t quite fit into his chest, but he tries. “ _Oh, little one_ ,” he hums, that same Gnomish lullaby that her Pawpaw used to sing.

The world looms large and loud and her head hurts very bad and her throat stings. She can’t breathe right and there’s water leaking from her face. And then she’s crying—really, honest-to-god crying like she hasn’t done yet and didn’t know if she’d ever be able to do—head jerking down, chin shivering, lips folded over teeth and terrible whimpering sounds escaping. Her heart is breaking and her great-great-grandfather is dead. He’s dead. He’s not coming back and she’s the grown-up, now, and he’ll never be able to see her get married or meet her kids or—

Fuck, she wants kids one day, little gnome babies she can grow into kind souls with open hearts and ready giggles and he won’t ever _meet_ them, they won’t ever know the man who raised her and a religion within the same lifespan. Salt gums in her mouth and coats her teeth and snot clogs her nose and she chokes, soaking through Scanlan’s shirt.

“ _Little one_ ,” he sings.

She sobs.

There’s no catharsis. No release.

Just pain.

 

-

 

(“Say,” her great-great-grandfather calls, “is that you, Charlie?”

Coming into the living room, Pike finds him leaning back in his armchair. Between his fingers glints a knife, peeling the bark from a branch as ably the local cook would skin a tuber. She sloughs off her heavy packs and sets them against the wall. In a few short steps, she crosses into his line of vision.

“No,” she says, loud enough for his weak ears. “It’s me.”

“Pike!” His face, previously sedate and slack, bursts into grinning excitement. He sets aside his whittling and pushes himself to his feet. “My girl!”

“Hi,” she murmurs, letting his frail, age-spotted hands cup her face. “I’m home.”

“You’re _home_ ,” he says, not having heard her. He kisses her cheek. “It was getting to be a while, young missy, I was wondering—isn’t it about time, um, that that hero granddaughter of mine comes to visit her doddering old Pawpaw? Surely she can’t _still_ be slaying dragons, there can’t be enough dragons left—but you’re here now, eh? And in one piece? No arms missing? All intact?”

She smiles. “Yes sir.”

“Good girl. Oh, yes, speaking of good girls… There’s a girl, Charlie, halfling girl, only comes up to, uh, about yay-high,” he motions to a point roughly half a foot above his head, “comes into check on me these days, a couple times a week. Brings me meals sometimes. Real good girl; I thought you were her, that’s why I asked. But you’re _you_ —and where’s our Grog?”

“He’s coming,” she promises.

“What?”

“He’s coming,” she repeats, louder. “Just saw Botsmir on the way here, stopped to talk.”

“Botsmir?”

“The one from the bootmakers? He and Grog had those wicked bar brawls—”

“He the speckly one?”

She shakes her head. “Big birthmark on his cheek.”

“Oh, _him_ , yes, right.” Blinking, he nods once: “I’ll give you a hand with that armor of yours. Then we can have a nice cup of tea or some biscuits.”

“I–” Truth be told, Pike doesn’t want to get out of her armor at all. Before she can protest, though, he’s already unbuckling the leather and tugging off her gauntlets. She gives in.

Ten minutes later, the two of them sit idly at the table in the kitchen, munching on some goodies. (“Pawpaw, you shouldn’t have sweets–” “Hush, it’s a special occasion.”) Dim grey light filters in from outside, moody and grim. Not even the warmth of the indoors manages to overcome it; not even her grandfather’s cheerful whistling brightens the room.

“Now,” he says. “Tell me everything. What was it this time? How many times have you saved us all from being cast into despair?”

Pike raises her eyebrows, thinking back. “Oh…a few.”

“I had some very interesting messages from the Everlight—she warned me you were all in some terrible danger. That’s been dealt with?”

Pike nods. She spins her mug around in her hands, wishing she hadn’t been so stingy with the tea leaves. Her drink hardly tastes like more than flavored water. “Yes. There was this…did we tell you about Vecna? I can’t remember.”

“Vecna, Victor, Valerie—you might’ve done, my old mind’s going a bit at the edges. Remind me. But first: Grog’s alright, yes? And that bard who thinks you hung the moon? And that…bawdy-minded half-elf girl, the fire-haired one?” He holds his finger up. “And…wait, don’t tell me. Was there a dragonborn with you?”

An unexpected, forgotten sadness ripples through her. “Not for a long time, no.”

“Oh, those twins, then. And that human boy, with the white hair. They’re alright?”

Pike opens her mouth to say something. Nothing comes out. The words get lodged in her throat, blocking her airway. Biscuit aftertaste sours in her mouth.

“Hm?” He frowns like he hasn’t heard her.

She shakes her head.

“Oh, no.” Solemnity shadows his cheerful face. He reaches out and grips her hand.

She takes a deep breath to steel herself. Loudly, so she only has to force it out once, she says, “Vax didn’t make it.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, just makes a low, soothing sound that’s more vibration than noise.

“He’s the Raven Queen’s, now.”

“I suppose he is. Ah, I’m sorry, Pike. That’s hard.”

She smiles a smile as watery as her tea. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not.”

She sighs. “Yeah,” she agrees. She stares down at the knobby brown creases of their interlocking knuckles. “It’s not.”)

 

-

 

“D’jou remember,” Grog booms, “that time we came home so pissed we couldn’t walk straight? We were still so little—hadn’t had much to drink before that. So we hid in the garden, thinkin’ the plants would hide us, but they didn’t, o’ course. So the morning ‘appens and there he comes, this teensy old little gnome man, out to us. And he goes,” Grog releases a long, gusty sigh that reeks of booze, “and says, come on in, we’ll get rid of that hangover. And he _does_.”

Pike smiles, wine-drunk and nostalgic. “He was so good at hangover cures.”

Jo, who’s been enjoying the raunchy tales of the past half-hour perhaps more than she should, giggles.

“Remember,” starts Keyleth. She hiccups. “That time when we visited because JB and Ogden were in town, and I said _PENIS_ really loudly, and he just kind of stared?”

“Penis? Oh, gods _above_ ,” says Gilmore, overly horrified, “that _poor_ man.”

More giggles, this time from all child and adult parties. Scanlan grins, but in the slightly tense way he always does at this story.

“You did that?” JB asks Keyleth. She’s flushed and glassy-eyed.

“We didn’t know if we could trust you yet, darling,” Vex explains. “So they came to Wilh–Westruun to ask.”

“Obviously, you couldn’t trust us.” JB bites her lip. “Sorry about that.”

Pike reaches out and punches her shoulder, forgetting she’s not Grog. JB winces. “Stop apologizing for that! It’s fine.”

“That diabetes line, though, Pike,” Percy says, voice even and sober. He stopped drinking an hour ago, for the supposed good of the children, though Pike knows it was really for the good of his liver. “Really excellent way to finish things off. I still laugh whenever I think of it.”

“JB and my family was trying to, uh, steal all of our money,” Pike explains, for the children’s benefit. “They pretended— _hic—_ they pretended there was a curse on our family, so we would have to give them things to get rid of it. We figured it out, and when I was sending ‘em packing, I said–”

“By the way, there _is_ a curse on our family,” says Scanlan, doing his high-pitched Pike-voice.

“You weren’t even–” Pike protests.

Over her, Grog bellows, “It’s called dia-BEET-us!”

Elaina ducks her head. Tears of embarrassed mirth are spilling out of Ricky’s eyes, his slim shoulders shaking, even though he’s missing half the context that sets up the joke.

Jo frowns. “What’s diabeetus?”

The adults and her siblings laugh more.

“Diabetes, Jo,” says Elaina.

“Oh,” says Jo. She turns to her aunt. “Why didn’t you just say ‘diabetes’?”

Pike shakes her head. “Dunno, honey.”

“Did you ever tell him about that?” Percy asks. “I think he would’ve found it hilarious.”

“You know…” Pike frowns. “I don’t think I ever did.”

A silence passes over the table, smiles fading.

“I did,” JB pipes up. “When I stayed with him, that year I took off from the Whitestone archives.”

“Really?”

She nods. “He snorted his milk out of his nose. Then he said you should watch yourself, because opening a bakery hardly helps with that.”

Pike giggles. Tears prick to her eyes, and she wipes them away. Scanlan wraps his arm around her shoulders, resting his head for a second before she shifts, and he pulls away.

“Good thing we shut it down, then,” Keyleth says. She takes a large gulp of her drink.

“I do miss those mediocre pastries.” Percy sounds wistful.

“Your belly doesn’t,” says Jo, cheeky, gesturing at her father’s paunchy stomach.

Elaina kicks her under the table.

Vex laughs before she remembers herself. “Love,” she says, “don’t talk to your father that way.”

Percy rolls his eyes, beleaguered and amused. Scanlan gives Jo a high-five.

A pause settles, filled with the clinking of glasses and the gentle slip-sloshing of wine and liquor. One knife carves into a thick slab of cheese, while another saws at a stiff, hard-shelled length of bread. Gilmore fiddles with some of his jewelry. Grog sets his tankard down a bit too hard on the table. JB coughs.

“He never talked about it,” Pike says. Words are coming out of her mouth but she’s not thinking about them before she hears them. “I wonder how he ran away.”

“What?”

“Pawpaw,” she clarifies. “From the Trickfoots. Every time I asked him, he just…slipped around it. Said something about counting our blessings and—and using our past to shape our compassion for others, or…yeah. Something.”

JB nods. “Wondered about that,” she admits, her eyes roving in a far-off way. “We won’t ever know. Everyone who was around back then is gone now.”

“Mm,” Vex agrees, a quiet murmur. “But leaving family, even bad family, is difficult. He was brave.”

Percy puts a hand on his wife’s thigh.

More silence. Elaina’s brow furrows, her gaze stuck to her Auntie Pike, but Pike registers the worry as a dull, distant thing.

Grog belches.

Pike looks at him. He’s funny, his grey-blue face blurring in and out. She looks at Keyleth, listing red-faced into his right side, and at Scanlan, wan but valiantly awake, on his left. Vex, and Percy at next to her, sit surrounded by three of their five children—children Pike _loves_ , children Pike would raise hell for. She sees JB, then, arranged next to Vex, the round of her chin so like Pike’s, the gap between her teeth visible in the slight hang of her jaw. Benny, straw-haired and genial, overlooks the scene with a simple, honest gaze. Finally, Gilmore slouches in his chair between Keyleth and Benny, contrasting Benny so strikingly in size, coloring, and attire for their coexistence to be almost absurd.

They all sit there, her friends, her family, gathered for her. Not for her great-great-grandfather—none of them, except Grog and JB, are really there for him. They’re there for Pike and her siblings, all of them, and the thought makes an uncomfortable mix of love and guilt bubble through her.

One day, they’ll all be gone. Gone like all the people who could have spoken to her Pawpaw’s youth, to the centuries of stories that must have preceded the old man she knew. Gone like Tiberius, and Vax, and her parents, and now her Pawpaw himself.

Seeing her friends, her chest burns as she thinks of _their_ funerals—of Percy’s and Grog’s—fuck, _Grog’s_ —and Gilmore’s, all sure to come in the next half century, and of Benny’s and Vex’s, sure to come not long after, and the children’s, and JB’s, and Scanlan’s, and then finally Keyleth’s…. Each of them with fewer and fewer people to speak to who they were, each of them inspiring a gathering who won’t really be there for them at all.

 _Everlight_ , she prays, lifting Grog’s tankard and gulping something harder than wine, _remember them. Someone should._

An hour later, Pike stands out at the gate, seeing the de Rolos and Gilmore off.

“Thank you guys so much for coming,” she says. The twin moons shine down, reflecting off everyone’s skin and Vex and Ricky’s glossy hair.

“Of course, darling. I’ll meet you at the temple tomorrow,” says Vex.

“Good night, Pike,” says Percy, and he wraps her in a big hug that once upon a time—when she was young and foolish and wholeheartedly and silently in love with a broken boy with hell in his eyes—would have killed her on the spot. “Sleep well.”

She smiles a sloppy, drunk smile. “Good night.” She looks down at the children, wrapping each of them in an embrace. “Night, kids.”

“Night, Auntie Pike.”

“Night.”

“Night, Gilmore.” Another hug.

“Good night, Pike. May your sleep be peaceful and your dreams calm.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

“Love you, Auntie.”

“Oh, I love you all _so much_.”

“Good night.”

“Night.”

“See ya.”

And then they leave, parading down the street.

A shoot of wind picks up, welcome in the humid autumn night, rustling through the bushes. Pike stands alone at the front gate, watching the weeds blow to and fro in the dark. Eventually, hearing the hoot of an owl and the chirping of crickets, she turns and heads back inside.

 

-

 

(“You don’t need to do this if you don’t want to,” he says. His weathered fingers grip loosely around her elbow, leading her through the alleys in the old sector of Westruun, where the cobblestones give way to dusty, cart-rutted roads. “I know the past couple days were hard.”

“Don’t worry, Pawpaw.” Pike lets herself be led, her rucksack full of the materials he’d asked her to pack. “I’m here.”

“Oh, you’re a good girl,” he says. “Alright, we’re, ah, done with the purification? Yes, right. Today we’re going to set up the memorial outside her home and we’ll pray. Then we’ll receive guests.”

“D’you think her sons will come?”

He pulls up short by the front door to a simple home with a thatched roof. “Sons…no. They don’t believe much in the gods. They’ll be there tomorrow, for the burial.”

Nodding, Pike gently moves his hand from her arm and takes her bag off her back. She pulls out a light blue blanket, a simple painting of Mrs. Mayad done by one of the girls who’d worked with her at the post office in town, two jars of candles, and sweet bread wrapped in cloth. She lays the blanket out by the door, which her grandfather unlocks and then props open. Opening her mind to her goddess and reaching for her power, she lights the flames in the candles as she intersperses them around the makeshift altar. She arranges the rest of the objects among them.

She kneels by the side of the blanket with her back to the wall. Mrs. Mayad’s body stays inside, but this part of the ritual takes place outside, where visitors won’t have to see the corpse. Bowing her head, Pike begins to pray. She feels uncomfortable, like she’s intruding—she didn’t really know Mrs. Mayad beyond polite smalltalk. But she tries to banish that unease, tries to clear her mind. After a minute, she hears her great-great-grandfather join her.

 _Everlight,_   _please take the soul of this woman into your arms. She lived with love and no tolerance for evil. Everlight, see the life of this woman as a work of both right and wrong, good and bad, but lived fully, with love and forgiveness. Guide her well into the next life. Everlight…_

“’Scuse me?”

The first visitor: a neighbor, a human woman. She looks as uncertain as Pike feels, her straight hair falling like water down her back. “Is this some…some ritual?”

“Did you know Mrs. Mayad?” asks Pike’s great-great-grandfather.

“Yeah, sure. Terrible sad to hear about her passing, loved that old bird… Knew she was a godswoman, but didn’t know what type.”

“She believed in Sarenrae. Would you want to remember her with us?”

“Remember her? Like, how?”

“Just sit with us and think of something kind she did to heal those around her. Then try to carry that memory with you throughout the day—try to act like you think she would’ve.”

“Oh. Sure.” The neighbor gets down. “Do I, like, close my eyes or somesuch?”

“If you’d like.”

The woman sits with them for a minute, then moves on. More visitors come, others go. Some see the ritual, duck back into their house, and come back with an offering for the altar that reminds them of the deceased.

 _Everlight_ , Pike keeps praying, _please take the soul of this woman into your arms. She lived with love and no tolerance for evil. Everlight, see the life of this woman as a work of both right and wrong, good and bad, but lived fully, with love and forgiveness. Guide her well into the next life. Everlight…)_

 

-

 

Pelor’s dawn breaks early, that day.

Heat drips over the country, heavy and humid.

Light shines in patches through the clouds. Birds call to one another from the boughs of the wiry crabapple trees. Far off, a faint breeze murmurs over the hills. The wind fades, though, before it can even dream of tasting the worn city stones.

Pike’s bare feet crunch over the first fallen leaves of the season. Her brother leads the procession down the temple steps. In his arms, he cradles a beautifully carved box. She follows behind him, part of a quiet parade. At one side, Scanlan marches with gentle serenity. Keyleth walks to her right, hair aflame in the dappled sunlight. The others file behind. Surrounding them are the high priests, the clerics, the community, spilling over the streets.

Many in the city pause their work to turn their faces as they pass. Others, recognizing the occasion, cross the street to join. The crowd swells—fifty, ninety, three hundred—all with shoes shucked and carried in hand.

Spread among the mob walk the young children of the temple, dressed in pale blue. Bronze jingles with each step they take—ribbons laden with small golden bells wrap along their arms and legs. Clumsy toddlers struggle to keep pace with their older siblings. Sun splits through breaks in the rough-edged clouds. Golden metal flashes and chimes.

Eventually, the stones turn to grass beneath Pike’s feet. Grog approaches the hole they had dug together, the brown dirt mound dark with dew. He sets the box down in a single motion beside it. He turns, uncertainty dragging at his lined forehead.

“Thank you, Grog.” Pike can hardly believe she’s the one speaking—her voice comes out calm and warm and even. She feels disconnected from her body as she turns to the crowd. “Thank you all.”

 _Mm-hmm,_ murmurs the crowd, soft-eyed and warm. Any whispered conversation that had sprung up on the walk over hushes. _Mm-hmm._

Koja, a broad-shouldered dwarven priest, steps out of the crowd. She’s one of the elders in the temple, beard and hair fully grey as they spill over her simple ceremonial shift. She was older when she converted, but her faith burns strong and true. She had taken up the duties of head cleric of the Westruun temple while Pike was in Vasselheim. Pike loves her, just as her great-great-grandfather had. When she gathers Pike in a strong hug, implicitly taking responsibility for the service, Pike loves her all the more.

“Health and Light to you and your family, sister Pike.”

 _Mm-hmm,_ hums the crowd, _mm-hmm._

“This morning, we come to remember,” Koja announces, straightening. Now, she echoes the few words, fragmented and patchwork, that have been recovered from the old, lost book of Sarenrae _._ “We come to live as our loved one has and now has not.”

_Mm-hmm._

“We come to forgive, to make peace. We come to offer thanks.”

_Mm._

“We mourn. We honor. We pick up this dimmed flame of light and we bring it to our chests, using it to rekindle the hearth within ourselves.”

Keyleth’s eyes shine with tears. She holds tight to Vex, who holds onto her in return. Grog moves to Scanlan, scooping him up without thinking, settling him on his shoulder. Percy stands with one hand on Elaina’s shoulder and one hand on Ricky’s. JB rocks back and forth on her feet, Benny by her side.

“In his memory, we will spread warmth, we will spread goodness. In his memory, we will spread light.” Koja raises her voice: “Light that will last forever. Everlight!”

 _“Everlight!”_ echoes the crowd, even those of Pelor, of Kevdek, of Ioun.

“Everlight,” Pike calls with them. Heat bursts through her chest, hotter and fiercer than the pervasive mugginess of the day. Her holy symbol pounds in time with her heart.

Suddenly, she sees ten-year-old Jo de Rolo, standing alone.

Lip shivering, the girl stares at the coffin with a single-minded focus. She doesn’t answer the calls with the crowd. She almost opens her mouth then snaps it shut, flinches, like she might not be allowed. Jo, who met Wilhand only a few times; Jo, who grew up trapped between Ricky and Percy, the godless, and Elaina and Vex, Pelor’s beloved; Jo, who looks wracked with guilt just for having the gall to be sad.

Pike’s holy symbol pounds and tears stream down her face and her Pawpaw is about to be lowered into a hole in the ground. This is not about Jo de Rolo, not at all—except it is, of course it is.

(Pike was a child, once. A strange relative sat down beside her at the edge of an apple grove. He was old and she was young and he saw her and she saw him. He offered her berries and forgiveness and peace.

This is not the same, not at all—but isn’t it?)

Pike goes to Jo and wraps her arm around the girl’s waist. Jo glances up, startled, guilty. Tears burn in her eyes and she looks away, embarrassed to be seen crying by her aunt who’s suffering far more than she could possibly be.

Pike presses a kiss to her cheek and keeps holding onto her.

Minutes later, after the calls have been answered and the prayer flutes blown, Koja prompts Grog to pick up the box once more. His body nearly doubled with sobs, Grog does—he lifts the box and lowers it into the hole.

“This man was a leader,” proclaims Koja. “Name one among us who he did not help! Who had no memory of his patience and kindness! I couldn’t. So now we follow his lead and honor his legacy. To let him set in darkness when he brought us so much light would be unimaginable. So now, friends, bring light!”

Slowly at first, a few people’s eyes crinkle. Then more people smile—some break into small stories of uplifting good deeds, others hug their friends and grin through wet lashes, and even others just stare up at the beams of light cast through the crowds and let the warmth blow over them. A few bards strike up a tune—the children shake their bells. An older couple start dancing, swaying together in the grass.

“Hey, Jojo,” says Pike. She looks up at her niece and smiles at her. “Will you come say goodbye to my Pawpaw with me?”

“How can you _smile_?” Jo bursts. Immediately, she bites her lip.

“Everlight, Jo,” Pike says. She smiles again. More tears slip from her eyes. “You don’t ask easy questions. Just come say goodbye with me and Uncle Grog, okay?”

“Okay,” Jo whispers, staring at the ground. She follows Pike back to the graveside, where Keyleth and Grog and Scanlan the other de Rolos and Gilmore and JB and Benny all have gathered.

“Buddy,” says Grog. He lifts Pike and hugs her tight for one beat, two. Pike hugs him back.

“He’s gone, Grog,” she says.

“Nah,” Grog replies, sniffing. “His light’s with us, n’ all that.”

Pike giggles, because—well, who would have ever thought of Grog saying that?

He puts her down. Together, they look out at the hundreds of people celebrating their grandfather’s life, the flailing limbs and curling laughter and gleaming hair. Then they look at their family. Pike decides to hug each one of them, their solid, beating bodies reassuring beneath her hands. Light shines down on the scene, most of the clouds breaking to bits above them.

Finally, Pike looks back at the grave.

For a moment, a terrible, clawing sadness threatens to drown her. She feels like a dull blade is grinding its way through her chest.

(Her Pawpaw is in there, trapped in that wooden box. He is never coming back, no matter how much she wishes he would. She is fifty and an orphan and exhausted.)

But her family hugs each other around her, pairing off in every possible combination. Jo de Rolo snakes an arm around her wrist and holds it there in her sweaty-little-kid hand. Pike looks up, to the headstone. The marble glimmers in the sunlight, etched letters glowing in a way that has nothing to do with magic.

Aloud, she begins to read the inscription: “Wilhand Trickfoot—”

Vex looks at her meaningfully, reaching over to rest a hand on her shoulder. Pike’s chest collapses, slightly: she realizes she hasn’t been able to say his name in days.

“Wilhand,” she says again. How had two syllables felt like such an insurmountable task? “Beloved of the Everlight Sarenrae—”

A gentle breeze blows across her face.

“Grandfather of Pike Trickfoot, Grog Strongjaw, JB Trickfoot…”

Grog sniffs. JB makes a gulping, choking sound.

“…and all of Westruun.”

_Wilhand Trickfoot, grandfather of all of Westruun._

There’s a pause, broken only by the laughter and tinkling bells of the crowd.

Suddenly, Elaina’s mouth falls into an O—she points up at the sky, gaze caught by something far away. Pike looks up to follow the girl’s line of sight, just in time to see a lone raven circle down from above. He lands on the coffin and eyes them with beady, dark eyes.

“Get off,” complains Grog.

The raven cocks his head.

“Oh,” whispers Keyleth.

Gilmore stares, captivated.

Vex’s lip whitens beneath her teeth.

“Hey, Stringbean,” says Pike. Of course he’d come—of course he’d be here. She imagines him as he was, all those years ago; his face in her memory is more Vex’s than his, now, warped by time, but she can still picture his dark clothes, his disrespectfully angled knees, his sad half-smile. “Thanks for coming.”

The raven bobs his head, inching forward along the wood until one of his eyes stares straight at Pike. In her mind, Vax nods at her. Wilhand waves at her from beside him, bent and weathered, his other hand on his cane as he leans in phantom-Vax’s shadow.

“Take care of each other, okay?”

The raven blinks. Fluffing his feathers, he takes off again, only to alight on the crown of her braids. He pecks her forehead once, twice, before she feels him flap his wings again.

Vex’s hand squeezes Pike’s shoulder. Jo de Rolo squeezes her wrist. Keyleth and Grog and Gilmore and Percy and Elaina and Ricky and JB and Benny and Scanlan all stand at her sides. Together, there, at Wilhand’s graveside, they crane their necks upwards.

Far above, the raven disappears into the sky as a single dark, shrinking dot.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic helped me get through a pretty rough time this past year, so thank you so much for sticking with it! if you wanna hit me up on tumblr, i'm @buffcleric
> 
> title is from "despair" by the yeah yeah yeahs


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